Chaldean ‘Godfather,’ Other Metro Detroit Iraqis Can Stay 2 More Weeks

DETROIT, MI — An Iraqi national who tried to overthrow Saddam Hussein in 1968, then earned the title of the “Godfather of the Chaldean Mafia” after resettling in Metro Detroit, can remain in the United States for at least two more weeks. Louis Akrawi, 69,was among 114 Iraqi immigrants with criminal records who were targeted for deportation.

U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith issued the opinion late Thursday afternoon, saying that he granted the stay on deportation while he sorts out whether his court has jurisdiction or if it should be transferred to immigration courts.

The majority of those detained are Chaldeans and Americans, a double edged threat to their safety in Iraq, where Christians have been persecuted. (For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Detroit Patch, click here to find your local Michigan Patch. Also, like us on Facebook, and if you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

“The court took a life-saving action by blocking our clients from being immediately sent back to Iraq,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement. “They should have a chance to show that their lives are in jeopardy if forced to return.”

The ACLU challenged the government after ICE agents arrested about 114 Iraqis — including many who’ve been in the U.S. for decades — in recent raids throughout metropolitan Detroit.

“We are thankful and relieved that our clients will not be immediately sent to Iraq, where they face grave danger of persecution, torture or death. It would be unconstitutional and unconscionable to deport these individuals without giving them an opportunity to demonstrate the harm that awaits them in Iraq,” said Michael Steinberg, legal director of the ACLU of Michigan.

Ruthless Crime Lord

In Detroit, which has a large Chaldean population, Akrawi became a public cheerleader for Chaldean immigrant resettlement and helped new residents establish businesses. But among police, he was a ruthless crime lord.

He was convicted of second-degree murder in a 1996 gang shooting that killed an innocent bystander. Paroled in February, Akrawi was among 114 Metro Detroit Iraqis detained in a June 14 raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Those targeted for deportation have criminal records, according to Rebecca Adducci, Detroit field officer for ICE. They are legal U.S. residents, but because they have criminal records, they were targeted for deportation, the government has said.

“The operation in this region was specifically conducted to address the very real public safety threat represented by the criminal aliens arrested,” Adducci said in a statement. “The vast majority of those arrested in the Detroit metropolitan area have very serious felony convictions, multiple felony convictions in many cases.”

Among them, Akrawi, who is being held in a federal detention center in Louisiana, is notorious.

As the leader of a crime syndicate that dealt drugs and had a connection with a Colombian cocaine cartel, he also ran illegal gambling operations and extortion schemes, retired Detroit police officer Charles Flanagan, who helped convict Akrawi, told The Detroit News.

“He was a big, barrel-chested SOB who thought he ruled the world,” Flanagan said. “He used to brag about how the cops couldn’t catch him, and how he was the baddest guy in Detroit.”

Author Scott Burnstein, who has written several books about organized crime in Detroit, told The Detroit News that Akrawi is a “complex figure.”

“Depending on who you ask, you’ll get a lot of different opinions about him,” he said. “He was a lightning rod. Some people in the Chaldean community passionately loved him, and certain members of law enforcement passionately hated him.”

Others detained in the raids earlier this month have raised their families in Metro Detroit and risk persecution if they are forced to return to Iraq, their lawyer argued Wednesday in a hearing in U.S. District Court in Detroit.

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the federal courthouse, chanting and hoisting signs that read “deportation is a sentence to death,” “save my daddy” and “stop deportation; we need our dad,” the Detroit Free Press reported.

Government lawyers argued that U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith, who was hearing an American Civil Liberties Union request for a stay on deportations, doesn’t have the authority to stop their removal. The issue is one for immigration courts to decide, they argued.

Most of those arrested in Detroit-area raids are Chaldean Christians, but there are also some Shiite Muslims and Christian converts. The ACLU says all fear violent retribution if they’re deported.

“The stakes of this litigation just can't be overstated,” attorney Margo Schlanger of the University of Michigan, the former civil rights chief in the Department of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama, said in a hearing Wednesday.

Most of the Iraqi nationals arrested are Christian and American, a double-pronged threat that “puts a bull’s eye on them” in minority-Christian Iraq, Schlanger argued.

Goldsmith didn’t immediately rule, and government lawyers said no one will be deported before Tuesday, June 27.

Detroit federal courthouse photo by Ken Lund via Flickr Commons