NEW YORK (RNS) — Five weeks after Imam El Hadji Hady Thioub, a leader of New York’s West African Muslim community, was arrested and placed in ICE detention, local faith leaders and immigrant advocates are still scrambling to obtain his release.
The 63-year-old imam, who is from Senegal, was arrested in early October at his Bronx home by Department of Homeland Security agents and taken to the Federal Plaza immigration court in lower Manhattan. Thioub, who didn’t have legal status at the time of the arrest, signed a voluntary departure agreement. But according to his attorney, Marissa Joseph, Thioub was not given an interpreter and signed the agreement under circumstances he later described as coercive and unclear.
In an email statement to Religion News Service, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed that Thioub had been arrested by Homeland Security Investigations agents on Oct. 8 and presented with a voluntary departure agreement.
Though Thioub expected to be freed as a result of signing the agreement, he was instead taken to Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, the East Coast’s largest immigration detention facility, according to the Rev. Chloe Breyer, the executive director of the Interfaith Center of New York, which advocates for his release.
Breyer said the ICNY has “been try …