Texas official wants to give man due process before he’s deported

TEXAS, Nov. 4 – The federal government would like to forcibly sedate and deport an immigrant-restaurateur who resisted his removal last August with repeated screams because of fears he’d be murdered if sent back to his native Albania.
But an unlikely champion from East Texas has penned a private bill in Congress that would allow 32-year-old Rrustem Neza to stay in the country until early 2009 – and give him time to receive a full rehearing of his political asylum case. Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Republican who sits on the House judiciary subcommittee on immigration, is opposed to loosening immigration. But he believes the government’s treatment of Mr. Neza is “intolerable” and “callous.”
Gohmert, a former district court judge, spoke to President Bush about the case this week, a staff aide said. Neza fears he will be killed back in his homeland because of his knowledge of a political assassination of a democracy leader in Albania, a European country of 3.2 million that fought off communism in the late 1990s. Two of his brothers have won asylum. And two of his cousins were killed in Europe because of the knowledge they had regarding the assassination of Azem Hajdari, said Neza’s Dallas attorney John Wheat Gibson.