Boy From Ghana Loses Deportation Fight

PHILADELPHIA -- A boy from Ghana who was detained by the government for three years after he arrived alone and almost penniless in the United States has lost his battle to stay here.

A federal appeals court refused earlier this month to reconsider a ruling that clears the way for Julian Yeboah, now age 13, to be deported at any time.

Julian was 10 and had only $1.25 in his pockets when he arrived, unescorted at a New York airport in March 2000. He has since spent his time in juvenile detention centers and secure halfway houses while his petition to remain in the country worked its way through the courts.

Julian's attorney, Stephen Harvey, said there will be no appeal to the Supreme Court.

"He can't spend his whole childhood in litigation," he said.

Attorneys argued Julian had been abandoned by his family, and as such was entitled to a juvenile court proceeding that might have allowed him to stay permanently in the United States in foster care.

Immigration officials said the boy's father placed him on the airplane as part of a misguided attempt to make him a U.S. citizen.

"He is going to go to Ghana, and we'll find out when he gets there whether he has been abandoned or not," Harvey said.
Harvey said Julian will remain at a halfway house in eastern Pennsylvania until he is deported.
Thousands of children arrive in the United States unaccompanied by an adult each year, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Advocates for child immigrants have been lobbying for legislation they say would reduce the number of cases in which minors are detained for long periods.
In another case, a mentally disabled man from Guinea who was a minor when he was first detained has been transferred from prison to a halfway house pending further hearings, an immigration spokesman said Wednesday.
Malik Jarno, 18, has been held in detention since January 2001, when he was spotted entering the country at Washington Dulles International Airport with a fake passport. In August, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to grant his request for asylum.
At a hearing Monday before the Board of Immigration Appeals, experts said Jarno would be ostracized if he returned to Guinea, which they said has no services for the mentally disabled.
In the upcoming proceedings, an immigration judge will decide whether Jarno's disability will qualify him for asylum as a member of a group that suffers discrimination in his home country.