NEW YORK (RNS) — Five weeks after Imam El Hadji Hady Thioub, a leader of New York’s West African Muslim community, was arrested and placed in ICE detention, local faith leaders and immigrant advocates are still scrambling to obtain his release.
The 63-year-old imam, who is from Senegal, was arrested in early October at his Bronx home by Department of Homeland Security agents and taken to the Federal Plaza immigration court in lower Manhattan. Thioub, who didn’t have legal status at the time of the arrest, signed a voluntary departure agreement. But according to his attorney, Marissa Joseph, Thioub was not given an interpreter and signed the agreement under circumstances he later described as coercive and unclear.
In an email statement to Religion News Service, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed that Thioub had been arrested by Homeland Security Investigations agents on Oct. 8 and presented with a voluntary departure agreement.
Though Thioub expected to be freed as a result of signing the agreement, he was instead taken to Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, the East Coast’s largest immigration detention facility, according to the Rev. Chloe Breyer, the executive director of the Interfaith Center of New York, which advocates for his release.
Breyer said the ICNY has “been trying desperately” ever since to get a lawyer to file a habeas corpus petition to challenge Thioub’s detention. Joseph, who recently took on the case, is expected to file the petition soon.
At the time of his arrest, Thioub was the first known faith leader in New York to be detained since the Trump administration began its mass deportation efforts. His detention shocked the local African community and galvanized faith leaders who have been advocating for the protection of migrants’ rights.
Thioub co-founded his small Bronx mosque, the Jamhiyatu Ansarudeen-Deen, three decades ago. At the peak of New York’s migrant crisis in 2022, it became a hub for West African migrants, frequently partnering with other houses of worship and the Interfaith Center of New York. Thioub’s congregation has pledged to continue welcoming migrants as they await Thioub’s release.
Imam Omar Niass, who co-led the mosque with Thioub, said the community has felt spiritually lost without him. The absence of the skilled Quranic teacher, he said, has been felt more intensely at Jummah prayer service, the Friday congregational prayer. “We don’t know exactly what to pray to feel comfortable again,” Niass said in a recent interview at the mosque. “If we (are) missing the big leader you can feel it in the mosque.”
On Nov. 7, Breyer, Episcopal Bishop of New York Matthew Heyd and Imam Saffet Catovic, a climate activist, went to Delaney Hall to meet with Thioub and with Ali Faqirzada, an Afghan student and asylum seeker, whose Episcopal congregation has advocated for his release.
During their hourlong meeting, Breyer and Heyd prayed with Thioub and discussed the conditions of his detention. (Cattovic wasn’t allowed in the facility, Breyer said.) Delaney Hall has become the focus of concerns about the treatment of detainees following reports by The New York Times this summer of insufficient meal portions and non-drinkable water at faucets at the 1,100-bed facility.
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Thioub, who arrived in the U.S. legally in 1986, last entered the country in 2019, according to his lawyer, using advance parole, a designation that allows foreign nationals to leave and return to the United States, usually because their immigration status is awaiting a decision.
Joseph said that by challenging his detention, the habeus corpus petition will ensure he receives a credible fear interview before being deported to assess whether he could face persecution in Senegal.
Ebrima Tambedad, 65, a member of the Bronx’s African Islamic Center, where Thioub frequently delivers khutab, or Friday sermons, said he was one of the first to create spaces for West African Muslims in the city. “He’s knowledgeable, and he is leading new converts to Islam,” said Tambedad, who shares a vehicle with Thioub that the two men drive for Uber. “We need him. We don’t want him to go.”
A speaker of French, English, Arabic and Wolof, Thioub normally accompanies new converts at the mosque, said Niass, who said leading the congregation alone has been challenging.
Thioub’s disappearance has also deepened fears among the majority-immigrant congregation. In March, Niass told NY1 that the mosque will continue to welcome undocumented migrants despite the Trump administration rescinding a policy preventing immigration enforcement from conducting arrests at houses of worship.
Over the past three years, the mosque’s migrant ministry, which has sheltered Christians as well as Muslims, has invited local Christian pastors to the mosque to lead prayer, and ministry members have in turn led prayers at local churches for their Muslim migrants.
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