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Local marathon runner deported to Ghana despite community support
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
They came to his jail cell in the morning, hand-cuffed him, took him to Columbus, put him on a flight to New York and then another to Ghana. He had nothing but the clothes on his back and $17 in his pocket.
That's what friends of Edward Mensah say happened Thursday, Jan. 8., to the quiet, well-liked Dayton runner who had been locked up in the Butler County Jail for 84 days.
Early one morning in October, he was pulled from his North Main Street apartment by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers who arrested him on a disputed 1990 immigration violation.
"I'm shocked," said his friend, Dr. Julius Amin, chairperson of the University of Dayton history department. "I visited him on New Year's, and we even talked about training for the Flying Pig Marathon again this year. He had hope ... this is so sad."
Karen Denise Bradley, Mensah's Dayton attorney, said it wasn't until late Monday that she was informed that her 41-year-old client had been sent to Ghana, where he'd lived as an adopted schoolkid.
"I don't know what happened," she said. "We have a motion pending in a Detroit immigration court to reopen his deportation and (officials) knew that."
She thinks his deportation coincided with the attorney general's Jan. 7 decision to overrule a long-standing Board of Immigration Appeals precedent that held that immigrants in deportation proceedings have the right to an attorney.
The fact that a decent man's life was ripped asunder held no sway with the feds.
Found orphaned on the streets in Ethiopia as a 5-year-old, Mensah was sent to Ghana where he said he was a child laborer. He came to the U.S. in his early 20s, briefly married and began citizenship proceedings.
Believing he had an open-ended visa, Mensah lived a public, law-abiding life — working, paying taxes, volunteering — in Dayton. Part of a local running club, he competed in many area races and in September had come in 18th among the 1,798 finishers of the U.S. Air Force Marathon.
After Mensah was taken from his apartment, he lost many of his belongings and his beloved cat, which was abandoned on the street.
I wrote about his plight and the story got dozens of responses from people who wanted to help him, some who even went searching, unsuccessfully, for his pet.
"He was just the kind of guy you wanted to have around you," said Ray Olfky, director of the Dayton River Corridor Classic, where Mensah had won the 5K race. "We called lawmakers — everybody from George Voinovich to Mike Turner — but nothing happened."
Still, Mensah clung to hope.
He wrote me a heartfelt letter on Christmas Day — "I am hearing they cannot deport you after 90 days unless a crime is committed," — and closed with "I thank you very much and would do so properly should I get released soon ... God Bless You and Happy Christmas."
Olfky said the local runners hope to put on a fundraising event for Mensah: "With the proceeds maybe he can begin his battle to come back here or, at least, it will help him get started in Ghana.
"We don't know what the reason for something like this is. Maybe one day we will ... But what we do know right now is that the United States lost a productive person last Thursday."
