Boy Reunited With Family, But Questions Unanswered

A groggy little boy from Morocco was reunited with his parents early yesterday at Reagan National Airport after a two-year separation caused by bureaucratic problems with his immigration papers.

Abdeloihab Boujrad, 38, a U.S. citizen originally from Morocco, and his wife, Leila, had been trying since June 2005 to obtain the paperwork necessary for their now 3-year-old son, Ahmedyassine, to join them in the United States.

It's unclear why his paperwork was held up, but an Islamic civil rights group that took up the family's cause suspected that it was because Ahmedyassine is similar to the name of the Palestinian founder of the Islamic militant group Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who was assassinated by Israel in 2004.

In June, after media reports highlighted the Boujrads' plight, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved the paperwork allowing Ahmedyassine to immigrate.

The boy arrived yesterday at Reagan National after flying from his home town in Morocco to Casablanca and then on to Washington via New York.

At a news conference, Boujrad said his son was asleep when he was taken off the plane. As his parents tried to wake him, the boy opened his eyes, saw his mother and father and muttered, "I must be dreaming," before falling back to sleep.

His parents roused him a second time, and his eyes opened wide. "I am with you now," the boy told his parents. "I rode three airplanes to see you."

Boujrad, who lives in Alexandria, said he was a little nervous that his son might not recognize him. But the family had kept in touch through video hookups on the Internet and frequent telephone calls during the separation, so the faces and voices were familiar.

"We were worried maybe he forgot us, but he was okay. He's a good kid," Boujrad said, as his son sat quietly and contentedly on his lap, playing with some new toys.

Immigration officials have not explained the delay, but officials with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which worked on the family's behalf, said they were certain the boy's name caused the delays.

Morris Days, a legal director for CAIR's Maryland and Virginia chapter, said he is working on more than a dozen cases in which Muslim immigrants are facing unexplained delays, particularly when it comes to taking their citizenship oaths.

"You can term it almost collateral damage from post-9/11," Days said. He called on federal officials to expedite other cases.

Boujrad was living in Morocco in 1997 and engaged to be married when he won an immigration lottery that allowed him to come to the United States. He married his wife in 1999 but was unable to bring her to the United States until 2005. She is now a legal permanent resident.

In the interim, Ahmedyassine was born in May 2004 in Morocco. Leila Boujrad reluctantly left the boy in the care of her sister in fall 2005, when her immigration visa was about to expire, assuming that the paperwork problems for her son could be handled quickly.

The boy's name was a compromise between Yassine, preferred by Boujrad, and Ahmed, preferred by Boujrad's father, according to the family. Boujrad said he didn't know who Sheik Ahmed Yassin was until somebody told him this year that his son's name might be causing the immigration problems.