Queens Mother & Daughter Hoping To Avoid Deportation To Bangladesh
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A Stony Brook University student says she is scared and worried about her impending deportation, along with her mother, to Bangladesh.
Nadia Habib, a 19-year-old psychology major, was 18 months old when she and her mother, Nazmin, moved from Bangladesh to the United States. Her father had a Green Card and the family settled in Queens.
Habib's parents had three more kids and so her siblings are U.S. citizens, but Nadia and her mother are not. Habib and her mom got a letter from Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Sept. 10 stating that they are being deported next Thursday.
"We have to be there with 50 pound of baggage each and have our passports and be ready to leave or they can detain us," she told CBS 2's Hazel Sanchez.
Habib told 1010 WINS' Mona Rivera that she is scared about going to Bangladesh, where she won't even be able to communicate.
1010 WINS' Mona Rivera Speaks With Nadia Habib
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"I'm not very accustomed to Bangladesh and how the people are or anything. Me speaking the language is like...no one knows what I'm trying to say," she said.
"I feel like I'm going to be in a room, depressed. I don't know anybody there. I can't speak the language," she told Sanchez.
Habib learned of her undocumented status during her senior year of high school. She and her mother have been unsuccessfully fighting for asylum status.
Habib and her mother would qualify for President Obama's DREAM Act, which says undocumented students illegally brought to the U.S. as children by their parents would not be targeted for deportation.
However, Habib says her case was ruled on some 11 years ago. She is seeking an appeal.
Her friends and other immigrant students have launched campaigns on Facebook and Twitter to keep the star student in America. Senator Kirstin Gillibrand has even joined the cause by hiring an immigration expert to help with the case.
"She's an amazing, wholesome, good person. She has so much potential to give to this country. It would be a shame to have her be lost," said Habib's friend, Juliana Perez.
"She's an American just like I am. And I don't know what kind of America we're living in if she would be deported. So please don't deport Nadia," said another friend, Malissa Ali.
"It just makes me really hopeful and happy that so many people are behind me and trying to help me stay," Habib said.
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