A New Jersey community is rallying around a beloved resident of 20 years, an Egyptian immigrant well on the legal road to U.S. citizenship and married to an American, who was inexplicably detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month.
On March 12, Karim Daoud showed up for a routine appointment to renew his work-authorization documents, according to family friend Rachel Mascitelli, who has created a social media page and launched an online fundraiser to help the family.
“When he arrived at the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program office, he was informed that there had been a mistake, and he had to go to ICE,” Mascitelli wrote on the Free Karim Facebook page. He “went to the office willingly” to clear it up, but “once at the Newark ICE facility, Karim was apprehended.”
Daoud, a devoted dad from Flemington with no criminal record, was told he’d be deported, Mascitelli told the Daily Voice. Moreover, he was on the cusp of being bused across the country to California, she said, until Sen. Andy Kim stopped that move.
However, three weeks later, he remains in a detainment facility.
Daoud’s wife, Jenn Metz, has been reaching out to congresspeople and doing everything in her power to bring her husband home, Mascitelli told NJ Advance Media. She’s been juggling that with caring for their children and visiting Karim every chance she gets.
Daoud’s journey toward citizenship had been “hard and a difficult process with a lot of paperwork,” Mascitelli told the outlet.
“Karim is not a criminal. He has no criminal history at all,” she wrote on the Facebook page. “He has lived in the United States for more than 20 years, and in those 20 years, he has always worked, paid taxes and helped his community in every way he can. He deserves to be with his family. They deserve to have him.”
The GoFundMe set up for the family had raised nearly $67,000 as of Tuesday evening.
Neither Sen. Kim’s office nor ICE were available for comment.
