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The Boston Globe
March 4, 2005, City & Region, p.B1

Teacher’s fans win a delay in his deportation

By Scott Goldstein

Student outcry over the threatened deportation of Obain Attouoman appeared to pay off yesterday, when the popular Fenway High School teacher won permission to stay in the United States until at least 2007.

“I feel overwhelmed at what’s happening,” said the 43-year-old math teacher, a US resident since 1992, who was helped in his bid to avoid being returned to his native Ivory Coast by students who mounted a fierce campaign to keep him stateside.
“I really cannot believe it yet,” he said. “I feel like I’m dreaming. . . . It’s just an incredible feeling to have children express such a high sense of responsibility.”

His supporters included a delegation of six students and two adults who met yesterday in Washington with US Senator John F. Kerry and staffers of other members of Congress.

One of those students -- Apocalipsis Rosario, 16, a Fenway High School sophomore -- said the idea to go to Washington came together in recent weeks.

“I am so overwhelmed and happy that he’ll be able to stay,” she said. “Now, we actually have time so that we can make it so that he stays here forever. I’m just so excited because in 2007 I’ll be graduating, but I want him to settle down and not have the fear of deportation.”

The reprieve was triggered by a request by Kerry to Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who chairs a key immigration subcommittee, for a background report on Attouoman from the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That automatically delays deportation proceedings until the end of the current session of Congress, Kerry’s office said.

Kerry also has filed a bill intended to allow Attouoman to stay here permanently. It is similar to a bill filed last year by US Representative Edward J. Markey, aimed at granting Attouoman permanent US residency.

Yesterday’s late-inning maneuvers ended a day of furious lobbying by Kerry, US Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and Governor Mitt Romney. At one point, it appeared that Attouoman, who teaches special education students, had won a delay of just a week.

Attouoman’s lawyer, Susan Cohen, who has been working on the case pro bono, said she was on her way to his house with champagne.

“I was starting to worry that I might not see Obain again after tomorrow,” Cohen said. “But we just didn’t let up our efforts.”

Last night, Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said that Attouoman was scheduled to be deported to Ivory Coast on March 11, an extension of an earlier deadline of today. Knocke had not heard about the longer postponement but confirmed that a request from Cornyn would bring about a delay.

The first hopeful news for Attouoman yesterday came after Romney sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. “I have heard from scores of Mr. Attouoman’s students who are concerned that the loss of their teacher in the middle of this school year will not only impact their education, but also will take from our community a man who has been willing to mentor young men who lack a prominent role model in their lives,” Romney said in the letter.

Attouoman has been fighting to stay in the United States since he missed an immigration hearing in 2001, after misreading the handwritten date on the official letter. A judge ordered him deported; Attouoman lost an appeal.

He was held in Suffolk County Jail on a deportation warrant for several months and released in March 2004, one day after a rally drew hundreds of supporters.

Attouoman has said he would be in danger in his homeland because of his political affiliations in the early 1990s.

Attouoman’s students delivered a letter of support to Romney’s office Wednesday morning, prompting the governor to write to Chertoff. The teacher’s supporters rallied outside the John F. Kennedy Federal Building twice in the past month, most recently Wednesday afternoon.

“This is the right way to end a day spent by so many people fighting to keep Obain Attouoman at home in Boston,” Kerry said in a statement. “It took . . . genuine bipartisanship to overcome the Washington stalemate and make a difference, not only in the life of a teacher, but in the lives of the students who cherish their time with him.”

Scott Goldstein can be reached at sgoldstein@globe.com.