Immigration agents have refused to say why they are moving to deport a New Jersey physics teacher and father of three - a man sentenced to death in Egypt.
But Ahmed Abdelbasit says he knows exactly what will happen if he's sent back.
"The Egyptian government will not wait one minute to kill me," he told WNYC's Matt Katz, on a phone from the Elizabeth detention center.
Physics teacher facing death sentence in Egypt detained outside N.J. home: report
No need to take his word for it, apparently: The military trial in which he was sentenced to death in absentia was documented by Human Rights Watch. He's now being represented by a lawyer from an international human rights organization.
When we asked ICE why they arrested this guy, a popular Union City private school instructor, at his Jersey City home a couple weeks ago, they cited unspecified "immigration violations."
So rest easy. No need to know why they're jailing him. Just be satisfied with what we know already: That ICE going after "bad hombres" is a lie.
We saw it with the Edison middle schooler who was in class when his father was put on a plane to Indonesia, after taking refuge here as a Christian fleeing persecution.
We saw it when ICE arrested church volunteers in Highland Park, including those who helped the victims of Hurricane Sandy; they had also fled anti-Christian rioters in Indonesia, and missed the deadline to apply for asylum.
ICE has lost all humanity in New Jersey. It's targeting people without using its discretion, and each case is more appalling. Who's next? The Dreamers?
Who threatens national security: Trump, or this N.J. dad? | Editorial
Abdelbasit said he applied for asylum, was awaiting a decision, and didn't find out until after he was jailed that he'd been denied. He doesn't know why. You'd think he couldn't have a more compelling case, given his history.
He was fired from the University of Cairo in 2014 for organizing protests against a military coup. The military trial in which he was later sentenced to death relied on dictated confessions elicited through torture, according to international watchdogs.
Egypt's bloody despot, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, allows his thugs to electrocute the innocent; hang them from their limbs until they sign false "confessions" - even two 14-year-old boys, one of whom who was raped with a wooden stick.
Reason to be skeptical, after Abdelbasit was named in a "confession" by a former university colleague as having paid the leader of a terrorist cell.
This is how they treat dissidents in Egypt. And sadly, we've seen how they treat asylum seekers in New Jersey: ICE jails them for months, even years.
Under Trump, we've become one of the worst states for arresting immigrants with no criminal records - just civil violations, like your temporary legal status expiring while your asylum case is pending.
And instead of paroling asylum seekers while their cases sit in the pipeline, under Trump, ICE is keeping them locked up; the subject of a recent lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.
People fleeing murderous gangs, political violence or torture who announce their arrival at our borders, legally apply for asylum and whose claims are deemed viable have every reason to keep showing up in court. It's a ridiculous waste of tax money to jail them as they wait for their numbers to be called in a backlogged system.
At his State of the Union, Donald Trump led a standing ovation for a North Korean defector who had escaped torture and other horrors. The president called his story a "testament to the yearning of every human soul to live in freedom."
But the Indonesian Christians, and this Egyptian dissident, are the real testament to how we treat people like him.
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