Editorial: Iraqi family deserves help

Tuesday, May 8, 2007 | 7:39 a.m.

A woman who fled Iraq in 1993 with her two children, and finally found safety in Las Vegas six years ago, is now facing deportation even as her country is engulfed in war and lawlessness.

Dallal Muhamed told her story to Las Vegas Sun reporter Timothy Pratt, whose article chronicling her past and current fears appeared Monday.

Muhamed said she had refused to join Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and was raped by a member of a gang linked to the late Odday Hussein, Saddam's son. An Iraq expert at Vanderbilt University noted that government-sanctioned rape was common under Saddam's rule.

Fearing that her husband would kill her out of shame, or take away her two children, Muhamed said she and her children escaped to Yemen. Their route to the U.S. included a stay in Germany, where they were granted political asylum. But Muhamed said, after she began receiving threatening phone calls and a picture of her daughter arrived in the mail, they fled once again - to Mexico, where they then came illegally to the U.S.

Last month the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld denial by lower courts of their application for political asylum, largely because they already had received it from Germany. With their status there now unclear, they face deportation, probably to Iraq.

Muhamed has found work here as a dealer. She is a homeowner who had dared hope that she and her children could find careers and safety here.

To send this family back to Iraq during war and widespread anarchy would be unconscionable. They face danger there because of a government that had been an enemy of the U.S. The family should be granted asylum. At the very least, they should be allowed to stay until their country is stable.