Everyone is so polite in court.

The judge smiles and thanks the ICE officers for their testimony. Here, they don’t wear masks and guns. They wear suits. With great decorum, they discuss what they told the crying wife before they kicked down the door, and why deporting a man who faces a death sentence in Iran over a consensual, imprudent sexual affair years ago – well, that’s just standard procedure. “Yes, sir.”

Jamil Bahlouli was tortured in his home country. Five years ago, a U.S. immigration judge found it “more likely than not” he would be tortured there again. That’s why, though Bahlouli’s claim for asylum was denied, a judge ruled in 2020 to withhold Bahlouli’s order for deportation under the Convention Against Torture.

Now, it seems he will be deported anyway. Not to Iran, ICE officers say – although they can’t guarantee that. There is no documentation explicitly authorizing his deportation, and no documentation specifying a third country to send him to, an agent confirmed during Thursday’s hearing. But that’s all routine, he testified. In fact, there’s no need for another day in court over it.

“It’s just an administrative process,” a prosecutor told the judge Thursday.

ICE agent Abel Rossi testified: “Any other country would suffice.” But not every country has a Convention Against Torture, and not every country will refrain from sending Bahlouli to a death sentence in Iran.

Where?

When ICE and state troopers showed up at Bahlouli’s door in Austin last week, his wife tried to tell them he wasn’t home. They persisted. She told them he’d be killed in Iran. Officers told her they could send him somewhere else. She asked: “Where?” They had no answer.

Body camera video of the conversation played on a screen in Austin’s federal courthouse Thursday. Bahlouli watched with his hands cuffed to a chain at his waist. When his wife cried on the screen, he cried in the courtroom.

In the video, she is wearing a teal dress, blinking her eyes like she’s just woken up, cracking the door open just enough to speak to the officers. She is an asylee from Afghanistan, a legal permanent resident. “The judge said he cannot be removed to Iran,” she tells the men. They wear sunglasses and baseball caps with guns strapped to their thighs. “He’s a very good person,” she tells them.

An officer responds: “Everybody’s a good person until they show their true colors.”

She shows them his court documents, tells them he is authorized to work, tells them he has a social security number, goes back and forth with them about the judge’s order to withhold his removal.

“I don’t want him to die. I don’t want him to,” she says.

She perks up. She says she’s going to call their attorney.

Through the cracked door, the officers watch Bahlouli make a call. The attorney does not pick up. She leaves a voicemail. She tries again. There seems to be no answer. She tries again, now pacing, pressing her wrist to her nose, sniffing.

The officers insist that she needs to let them in. The warrant for Bahlouli’s deportation will not allow them to enter without her permission, but they say it doesn’t matter – they will just come back with a criminal warrant. Then they could break down the door if they want. They tell her: “You’re harboring him,” and, “You’re gonna get in trouble too.”

They tell her: “We’re not gonna hurt him. That’s not our job.”

After a few minutes, she steps out of view behind the door. Then the door closes.

That was a felony, ICE argued, pointing to a rarely used statute that penalizes actions “preventing or hampering the alien’s departure.” They claimed it was Bahlouli himself who “slammed” the door, hindering his own departure. With this suspected felony, they claimed authority to kick down the door. So they did, and took Bahlouli away.

But that rarely used statute doesn’t make it a crime to avoid ICE in every situation, Public Defender Horatio Aldredge argued. To hinder one’s “departure,” the defender argued, means to resist exiting the country at the tail end of a deportation process – usually at the airport, according to case law. How could Bahlouli have hampered a hypothetical future departure, and one he had no reason to believe was legal due to the 2020 decision to block his removal?

Aldredge questioned an ICE agent on the stand Thursday: “Let’s say I have a removal order against me, and you come to my house, and I see you outside the window, and you wave the removal order at me, and I wave at you and I don’t open the door. Have I hindered my removal?”

No, that would not be a crime, the agent testified.

“So the difference between non-criminal conduct and a felony is opening a door and shutting it?” Aldredge asked.

The U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Hightower agreed with Aldredge. ICE lacked probable cause for a criminal arrest.

But that arrest already happened. Bahlouli is in ICE custody. Officers testified that they believe they have authority to deport him anywhere but Iran – and maybe even Iran, Rossi testified, if the Department of Homeland Security determines the conditions “have changed enough for the person to go back to the country of origin.” A DHS unit in D.C. would select the country, and ICE would follow that direction, he testified.

Outside the courtroom, Bahlouli’s wife consulted with attorneys in hushed tones. No other country would be safe, she told a reporter, and it was nearly a whisper: “They’re gonna kill him.”

DHS had not answered questions from the Chronicle as of publication July 4.