ICE says they arrested a human-rights violator. Retired federal agents call him a hero.

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By Maria Sacchetti May 31 at 6:52 PM—After an immigration roundup in Virginia this spring, federal officials announced that they had captured a former lieutenant in a Somali national-security agency notorious for human-rights abuses.

But retired federal agents tell a different story about the thin, bespectacled father who has been sitting in an immigration jail since late March. They say he is a confidential FBI informant who risked his own safety to save American lives and should have received a Green Card. Instead, he faces deportation to a country where his history of spying for the United States could get him killed.

The man, whose name is being withheld by The Washington Post out of concern for his safety, prevented a “major terrorist attack” on a U.S. embassy in Africa, uncovered support networks for some of the 9/11 hijackers and probed the killings of U.S. servicemen in Somalia, according to confidential affidavits from retired federal agents shared with The Post.

“He’s getting a raw deal,” said Richard J. Lauria, a former immigration special agent assigned to the country’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. “He went above and beyond, and he shouldn’t be in the position that he is now.”

The man’s case illustrates the powerful leverage that the U.S. government wields over foreign informants and witnesses and the trade-offs for both sides. The government has long offered special visas to immigrants who provide critical information about terrorism or criminal organizations, even if those immigrants are here illegally or have criminal records themselves.

The visas lead to a Green Card or U.S. citizenship. But critics say the United States often does not keep its side of the bargain, leaving people such as the Somali man in legal limbo as long as they cooperate — and at risk of deportation when they stop.

Source: Washington Post