Evergreen Park Woman Who Hid Terrorist Past Agrees to Deportation

DETROIT, MI — A Palestinian-born activist who spent 10 years in an Israeli prison for participating in 1969 bombings at a supermarket and the British Consulate in Jerusalem admitted in federal court in Detroit Tuesday that she had lied about her past to gain U.S. citizenship. Rasmieh Yousef Odeh, who resided in Evergreen Park for more than two decades, agreed to be deported to Jordan rather than go to jail, the U.S. Attorney’s office said.

Odeh, 69, was arrested at her Evergreen Park apartment building in 2013 on charges of immigration fraud. She was convicted the next year of unlawful procurement of naturalization, which brought with it an 18-month prison sentence and deportation. The conviction and sentence were later vacated and she was granted a new trial.

Odeh was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which the U.S. government classifies as a terror group. Odeh was convicted in the Feb. 21, 1969, bombing at the Supersol supermarket that killed two and injured nine, and the bombing four days later at the British Consulate. No one was injured in the second attack, but the two bombs that detonated caused structural damage to the Consulate building.

Odeh was sentenced to life in prison in 1970, but was released after 10 years as part of a prisoner exchange for an Israeli soldier captured in Lebanon, the Justice Department said in a statement. She obtained an immigrant visa in 1994 and has since lived in the United States. She was granted U.S. citizenship in 2004.

She was convicted of immigration fraud, but she won the right to a new trial after claiming she had been suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder when she lied on the application for the visa, Business Insider reported. She has said that she only confessed to the bombing because she had been tortured, raped and subjected to electric shocks by the Israeli military.

However, in federal court this week, Odeh admitted that she intentionally made the false statements on her immigration visa, and not as a result of any mistake, PTSD or any other psychological issue or condition, as she had previously claimed, the Justice Department said.

Once the associate director for the Arab American Action Network in Chicago, Odeh helped organize rallies opposing President Trump and his immigration policies. She co-authored with other women activists an opinion piece in The Guardian that spelled out the reasons for the Day Without Women strike on March 8.
She also worked in Illinois as a health insurance marketplace navigator for Obamacare, as President Obama's signature Affordable Care Act is known, to help applicants establish eligibility for enrollment for health coverage. After her arrest, the Illinois Department of Insurance revoked Odeh’s certification as a navigator in-person counselor.

Odeh was profiled in a 2004 documentary “Women in Struggle” and even attended a Chicago showing of the film at the Gene Siskel Film Center. The documentary recounts how recounts how Odeh and two other women became active in the national fight for Palestinian independence. During her incarceration, Odeh, as well as the film’s other female subjects, allege that they were beaten, tortured and raped into giving up information about Palestinian liberation groups.

If she hadn’t agreed to deportation to her native Jordan, Odeh could have spent 10 years in prison. She will be stripped of her U.S. citizenship when she is sentenced at 2 p.m. on Aug. 17 before U.S. District Judge Gershwin A. Drain in the federal courthouse in Detroit. She will not be allowed to re-enter the United States.
“The United States will never be a safe haven for individuals seeking to distance themselves from their pasts,” Steve Francis, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations-Detroit, said in a statement. “When individuals lie on immigration documents, the system is severely undermined and the security of our nation is put at risk.”

“This is very unjust, very wrong,” Odeh said as she left the courtroom in Detroit, according to the Business Insider report. “That they can just send you away from this country after 24 years that I’ve been living here, it is wrong.”

Beth Dalbey of the Michigan Patch staff contributed to this report.

Patch file photo