Youngstown businessman Amir "Al Adi" Othman was set to be deported back to Jordan late Monday night, a member of his family tells WKYC Channel 3.
Othman was scheduled to board a flight from Chicago's O'Hare Airport to Amman, Jordan at 10:45 p.m., local time.
His daughter, Lina Adi, posted the following on her Facebook page:
The Othman family is planning to hold a rally in Cleveland on Tuesday.
Othman moved to the United States when he was just 19-years-old, going from Jordan to San Diego, where he met his first wife and received a green card. After the couple’s divorce, he moved to Youngstown, where he met his second wife. They later moved overseas.
When they returned, Othman’s green card was confiscated.
“It was painful, it was something that I do not wish on anybody to go through,” he told Channel 3 News.
Earlier this month, Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan introduced a private bill to stay the deportation, yet there was no guarantee it would work.
Ryan posted the following reaction to Amer Othman's deportation late Monday evening:
Othman and his wife sold their home, gave away furniture, purchased two tickets to Amman, and planned to leave.
But then, ICE officials allegedly asked him to postpone the trip.
On January 16th, they asked to speak with him and it appeared his case might be spared. Instead, he was taken into custody where he has been ever since.
Last week, ICE released a statement confirming the deportation. “Over the last decade, Mr. Othman’s immigration case has undergone exhaustive judicial review at multiple levels of the nation’s courts, including before the immigration courts, federal appeals courts and U.S. district court,” it read. “In each review, the courts have uniformly held that Mr. Othman does not have a legal basis to remain in the U.S.”
Andrew Horansky contributed to this report.