UES Porter Has Deportation Stayed, Remains In ICE Custody: Union

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A porter who has worked on the Upper East Side for more than a decade was granted a temporary stay of deportation, but was not allowed to return home from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainment facility in New Jersey, the man's union announced this week.

Baba Sillah, 48, has been held in ICE custody since a Jan. 31 check in with the agency at its offices in Lower Manhattan, a spokeswoman from 32BJ SEIU said. Sillah will have a hearing on March 15 to determine whether his stay of deportation will be extended and whether the man will be able to return home to his wife and four children while his case moves forward, the spokeswoman said.

The Gambian-born immigrant applied with the federal government for permanent residency in the country to better support his wife and children, who are all United States citizens, a union spokeswoman said. Sillah has lived in New York City since 1993 and has worked on the Upper East Side since 2006.

Sillah's union, 32BJ SEIU, held a rally this month with the man's family, elected officials and the imam from his mosque to demand his return to his family.

"We will continue to resist Trump’s racist and cruel immigration policies that aim to tear apart families like Baba’s, which make our city and our country beautiful and strong," Walter Cooper, a member of 32BJ SEIU’s executive board, said during the rally.

The union is planning another rally to support Sillah on Monday, March 4.

Sillah is currently being held in the Hudson County Correctional Center in Kearny, New Jersey and has not been able to see his family since he was taken into custody. A spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement that Sillah was first told to leave the United States in 1999 and was later taken into custody in 2011 but wasn't deported because the agency could not "obtain the proper travel documents for his removal." The spokesperson also said Sillah has local criminal convictions, but did not say which crimes.

"We thought that we were on our way to get Baba his green card so we could continue building our future here," Sillah's wife Mamou Drame Sillah said in a statement. "It was a shock when he was taken. I don’t know what we’ll do if he has to go back to Gambia. It will be a terrible hardship for our family, for our kids, for me and my mother, who depend entirely on him as our support."