In 1998, The Oregonian/OregonLive chronicled the story of an Iranian couple, who were facing the choice of whether to leave their severely handicapped son, a U.S. citizen, in Portland if immigration authorities deported them. They knew he would not get the medical care he needed in Iran. It was an impossible choice. Years later, another son in the family won a prestigious journalism award. Hamed Aleaziz is a reporter for BuzzFeed News. Below is The Oregonian story that changed the trajectory of his life.
Here is the story on National Public Radio, with host Ari Shapiro.
Published June 12, 1998: By Katy Muldoon
ILL BOY RESTS AT HEART OF CLASH BETWEEN LOVE, LAW
An Iranian couple might have to leave their severely handicapped son, a U.S. citizen, in Portland if the INS deports them
The calligraphy above Alireza Aleaziz’s hospital bed flows gracefully across a crisp white page.
Translated from Farsi, it says: ``God be with you all the time.'' Whether he is aware of it or not, that belief flows through the life of this profoundly disabled 13-year-old.
At the moment, others with powerful beliefs -- Muslims, Christians and Jews -- have united in an effort to ensure that Alireza can live the remainder of his life -- perhaps only a few years -- wrapped in the blanket of his family's love.
Doctors, nurses, social workers, friends and acquaintances are writing to President Clinton and the chief of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, begging them to intercede on Alireza's behalf.
At issue: a clash between love and law. On one side of the battle are the boy's parents -- Iranian citizens who risk deportation because their U.S. student visas have expired but who want to remain near their child, who has cerebral palsy and a long list of other ills. On the other sidethe INS -- an agency with such a massive workload that if it didn't live and breathe by strict regulations, it could not do its job.
Farzad Aleaziz and Roya Ahmadi of Corvallis have lived legally in the United States for 19 and 15 years, respectively, while Aleaziz maintained his student status by learning English, then earning bachelor's and master's degrees and a doctorate in fisheries management at Oregon State University.
Now fully educated, Aleaziz and his wife apparently are out of options to remain in the country. Unless they can persuade the INS to reconsider their case, the family, including two younger sons, who, like Alireza, are U.S. citizens because they were born here, might have to return to Iran.
The move would split up their family, leaving behind Alireza, who has been severely handicapped since birth.
One of his doctors says the child's health is so fragile he might not survive the 23-hour flight. Even if he did, say people familiar with the level of technology and medicine in Iranian nursing centers, he never could receive adequate care in that
Left behind, he would be abandoned by the family that has cared for him through 13 years, a half-dozen surgeries and countless trips to scores of doctors.
``It’s going to be like taking an arm off them -- or a heart -- to leave this baby here,‘' said Dr. Lydia Fussetti, a pediatrician at the Corvallis Children’s Clinic who has treated the Aleaziz children for 13 years. ``They have been very devoted. . . .
``They're not trying to pull anything. They're not trying to scam the government. They're just trying to keep their son.''
The INS, however, sees the family's case differently.
As a last-ditch effort to stay in this country legally and to acquire a work permit so he can support his family, Farzad Aleaziz asked the INS earlier this year to place him and his wife in removal -- or deportation -- proceedings. If the INS granted that request, the two then could apply for work permits and for procedures called ``cancellation of removal'' and ``adjustment of status.‘'
If the INS granted their request, the couple could plead to an immigration judge for permission to stay and work in the United States, based on the fact that their deportation would cause exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to their U.S. citizen child, Alireza.
It's a risk. The judge could say no.
But the family and their attorney, Tilman Hasche, think it is their best chance to remain in Oregon with their firstborn son.
Aleaziz and his wife say they always intended to return to Iran. But as their son's condition worsened, they tried other avenues to stay legally -- from entering visa lotteries to searching for an employer who could petition on their behalf. Each attempt failed.
And although many noncitizens find ways to stay and to work illegally, Farzad Aleaziz, 40, says he has never -- and will never -- break the law.
Now, their dilemma: This spring, David V. Beebe, district director of the INS in Portland, denied the Aleazizes' request to be placed in removal proceedings.
In a written decision, Beebe said the family's situation doesn't top the priority list for the INS, an agency notoriously understaffed for its overwhelming workload.
And, Beebe said, prosecuting -- or placing noncitizens in removal proceedings -- on demand is tantamount to relinquishing control of the service's enforcement resources to illegal noncitizens ``who intend to evade detection and apprehension by the Service until such time as they, too, become statutorily eligible to petition the Immigration Court for discretionary relief.''
The U.S. Census Bureau recently estimated that 5 million noncitizens illegally live in the United States; 40 percent of those people violated their nonimmigrant status by remaining after their authorized period of stay -- such as on student or employment visas -- expired. The Aleazizes' visas expired at the end of April.
This year, Beebe said, the INS chose to focus its resources on criminal noncitizens; people who employ illegals; and immigrant smuggling organizations.
``Setting operational priorities, such as these'' Beebe wrote, ``assures the Congress and the American people that the Service is attempting to maximize the rate of return on every tax dollar so invested in the Service . . . .''
He said the Aleazizes family's case ``resembles literally hundreds of thousands of similar cases where aliens, of their own volition, have violated the conditions of their authorized period of temporary stay in the United States.''
In a telephone interview last week, Beebe added that neither the family nor their attorney ever asserted that Alireza would be denied medical treatment in Iran or supplied evidence that sufficient medical care was unavailable there.
But Hasche, of Parker Bush & Lane Attorneys, said Beebe ``is not seeing the forest for all the trees.''
``If Mr. Beebe felt that we had failed to adequately document the lack of medical facilities,'' Hasche said, ``he could have simply said: Do you have any further information on this? Instead, he simply took the position that we are scamming the system. So I think his argument falls short.''
The family has introduced testimony from a nurse who worked at a Tehran, center for the disabled; she said conditions are so poor that children with fewer medical problems than Alireza are essentially left to die.
Checks with several other medical experts familiar with health care in Iran show that the family's fears are well-founded. Among them is Dr. Iradj Nazarian, an Iranian American who specializes in clinical pathology and family practice in the Los Angeles area and is affiliated with CultureNet, an online public service organization for Iranian American medical specialists.
Nazarian said that for the most part, the disabled in Iran are cared for at home. Not only are medications scarce, but seizure medication, which Alireza requires, would not be available, he said. And skilled nursing centers are expensive and extraordinarily difficult to find. Even in the best centers, he said, the care would not approach U.S. standards.
Roya Ahmadi, whose pregnancy with Alireza proceeded perfectly, knew shortly after he was born that something was wrong with her baby.
He cried so incessantly that neighbors once called police, concerned for the infant's safety.
At 6 months, tests revealed severe brain damage, and doctors warned that Alireza might not survive a decade.
``It was devastating,'' the boy's father said.
At one point, Aleaziz told doctors: ``If he dies from these diseases, I want to die with him. He is everything to me.‘'
Alireza was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, epilepsy, profound mental retardation, aphasia and intracranial calcifications. He is quadriplegic. His vision is severely impaired. He has such trouble swallowing that he has been fed through a stomach tube since he was 3.
The older he got, the sicker he grew.
Alireza's bouts of pneumonia, respiratory and cardiopulmonary problems sent the family racing to the emergency room time after time, including the day Ahmadi was due to deliver her second child by Caesarean section.
It's difficult when thumbing through a family photo album to detect the family's anguish. Alireza, dressed in brightly colored baby rompers, grins broadly in picnic and birthday party pictures. His parents stroke his head, hold him tight and smile back.
Although some doctors suggested they institutionalize the boy, his parents wanted him home.
``I took it as an insult,'' Ahmadi said.
They tried to give him as normal a childhood as possible; he attended school in a special education class, then would return home, where his mother would feed him through a tube, change his clothes and administer medications.
As Alireza grew, moving him from bed to wheelchair to car became increasingly difficult.
Then Alireza began to have trouble with his hips. Two surgeries later, when he was 11, doctors told Aleaziz and Ahmadi that their son required such careful handling that home care was no longer a viable option. Alireza needed to be in a center equipped with the staff and machinery for the intensive care he required.
They call it Alireza's neighborhood, this colorful batch of rooms, busy with activity and filled with music.
He has lived in the Children's Nursing Center at Providence Child Center in Northeast Portland for two years. It is the only pediatric skilled nursing center in the Northwest.
Because Alireza is a U.S. citizen -- and because at Providence, parents are not allowed to pay -- Medicaid covers much of the cost of his care; United Way and other Providence Child Center Foundation donors also contribute. When Aleaziz was working, his health insurance picked up some of the bills.
Shoshana Grammer, foundation executive director and director of public affairs, describes Alireza simply: ``He's a smiler.
``We can't assess how much cognitive ability is there, but . . . he recognizes his mom, dad, friends and family. He laughs when you tickle him. He sees a bright color or hears a song, and he'll respond. He's engaging. He has a bit more than some.''
Alireza, a boy with wavy, thick brown hair and wide dark eyes, cannot walk or talk. He can't control his movement. And his only forms of communication are to laugh and to cry.
Three or four times a week, Alireza's parents and brothers make the 180-mile round-trip drive from their modest Corvallis apartment to visit him. When they are near, he laughs and leans toward their touch. When they leave, he cries -- as does his mother, all the way home to Corvallis.
Around the clock, he requires others to feed him through a gastrostomy tube with a feeding pump; every eight hours, a nurse assesses the site of the tube and treats it as necessary. To ease his pain and keep him comfortable, staff must move the boy's position every two hours -- from sitting in a wheelchair, to strapping him into a standing position, to lying down. It takes three people to move the boy, now 4-foot-7 and 80 pounds. They give him Phenobarbitol and Valproic Acid to manage his seizures and pain medication as needed.
Alireza is incontinent and is monitored for constipation. He uses a product called Duoderm for skin breakdown. He receives calcium and vitamin supplements. He requires a custom-fitted wheelchair and other equipment to help keep his joints from contracting, increase his bone density and aid in digestion. Because of severe foot deformities, he requires special footwear, molded and fitted by a physical therapist and orthotist and adjusted as he grows.
Pediatric specialists are required for his dental, neurology and orthopedic needs, as are physical therapists to help with his range of motion.
Dr. John Springer, one of Alireza's physicians, said that puberty -- a time of growth and physical change -- can make children such as Alireza medically less stable, so they must be closely monitored.
In a letter outlining his concerns about why Alireza could not travel to Iran if his parents are deported, Springer detailed the impossibility of such a long flight and worried at length that his patient never could access such specialized care abroad.
Springer is not the only one to put pen to paper on Alireza's behalf.
Foster grandmothers who work at Providence have started a letter-writing campaign, as have parents with children at the Montessori School affiliated with Providence, where Alireza spends time each week.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wrote to the INS urging the agency to reconsider its ruling. David Seldin, a spokesman for Wyden, said the senator ``just feels that in a case like this, where a young person's life could very well be at stake, the United States government should put basic principles of humanity first.''
And the Aleazizes' attorney sent a four-page memo to Doris Meissner, commissioner of the INS in Washington, D.C. In the memo, Hasche reminds Meissner of words she spoke emphasizing the importance of cohesive families during her confirmation hearing in 1993:
``Family reunification has been the centerpiece of our legal immigration system for decades, and it should remain so. The reason is that it benefits American citizens. . . . Legal immigrants come to the United States because our citizens believe family members should be able to live together.''
Farzad Aleaziz and Roya Ahmadi are touched by all the hands reaching to help them.
Because Aleaziz is now out-of-status -- without a visa or work permit, in other words -- he cannot legally work.
The Hewlett-Packard Co. computer chip plant in Corvallis, where Aleaziz has been a production worker, still considers him an employee. He is on a leave of absence until he can get a work permit.
Friends are helping the family pay bills until Aleaziz can work again. He worries, however, that their generosity can’t last more than another month or two. He’s particularly concerned about making his car payment; without transportation, the family could not regularly visit Alireza in Portland.
And he worries about his rising legal bills.
Grammer, of Providence Child Center, set up the Aleaziz Family Legal Defense Fund at U.S. Bank. The effort to gather donations to defer the family’s legal bills is her own, she says, not one tied to the center.
But she and others there are pushing hard to help Alireza's family stay near him, so they can continue their intense involvement in his care.
``This story goes beyond race and religion,'' Grammer said. ``Here we have a Catholic institution with a Muslim family. I'm Jewish. None of us even thinks twice. It's really kind of America at its best -- just working from our hearts and doing what's right.
``We’re an extension of their family. We feel like we’re all in this together.‘'
Postscript: Nearly a year later, an immigration judge granted a motion to allow the parents to become permanent legal U.S. residents. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, then U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, the Iranian-American community and many other supporters had pressed their case. Alireza now lives in an adult care home.
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