“It's starting again. I don't know what to do. My family is worried,” her voiced boomed from the other end of the phone line. I told her to that it would be okay, and that we would think of something.

*Fatima is a 24-year-old Iraqi-American woman living in San Jose. Over the last couple of years, her family has been frequented by random visits by the FBI.

Since shortly before the start of the most recent war in Iraq, the FBI has visited her family on eight different occasions. The visits along with her families immigration status has unexpectedly put Fatima in a position of being her families lawyer, counselor and guardian. Fatima describes the ordeal as frustrating and burdensome. She says dealing with the FBI has become an unneeded stress between working to save money in hopes of one day attending medical school and raising a hospital-ridden child as a Muslim single mother in the South bay.

I recently sat down with Fatima, in her San Jose home,   to talk with her about the experience. Her house is nestled in a middle class neighborhood directly across from a high school. Not quite on the inside of the street, her little home can easily be overlooked as it sits on the outskirts of her block.

The inside of her house is colorfully decorated with pictures of Mecca adorned with scriptures from the Koran. When I arrived she greeted me warmly at the door with her daughter straddled onto her side.

“Asalam-Alaikum, thanks for coming by. I'm sorry my house is really petite, but please make yourself at home”.

Fatima's story is all too common for many Bay Area immigrants over the past year. Her family escaped the threat of a U.S. invasion 15 years ago, only to find themselves confronted with things they tried to leave behind.

“We originally came to the United States to visit an aunt, but found ourselves stranded here when the United States invaded Iraq during the first Gulf War. We had to re-start our lives with almost nothing. We couldn't go back because of the war,” Fatima says while caressing her daughter. As the war escalated more and more of her family escaped to the United States. “We all filed for political asylum because things were too crazy to go back to. But the political asylum process has been extremely difficult, especially after 9/11.”

Fatima has helped her mother, father and two siblings who've all fled Iraq (except the youngest sibling who was born here) to start new lives in the United States.  

“I've realized that for people in my situation, living here can be just as bad as living under a dictatorship” she said as she glared out her humble home pointing to a newly installed camera atop the school roof across the street, she is convinced is aimed at her.

The first time the FBI came to her home was shortly before the Iraq war just over two years ago, when Fatima was still about six months pregnant. Her mother, she explains, was taken back by their presence, and in middle eastern fashion did what she thought would make the situation less apprehensive. Like a scene from a hollywood film, Fatima remembers walking into her mother's living room and finding two FBI agents being served her mothers homemade tea.

The FBI officers claimed that a neighbor reported seeing Fatima being a victim of an anti-Muslim hate crime. She tells me that she laughed and said, “What do you guys really want from me?” After a brief conversation, the agents told her that they were also looking for “intelligence“ from her about possible targets in Iraq. The agents proceeded to ask about her family's thoughts towards the United States, what mosque they attended, and general questions about the day-to-day lives of the family.  

“I don't know what kind of intelligence they wanted from me. I was six when we left Iraq.”   She went on to say that, “Several months later, my older brother was picked up by officers at work and detained.”

She recalls having to deal with federal officers for weeks on end trying to untangle immigration laws to figure out a way to prevent her brother from being deported. Fatima contacted a lawyer to help expedite the process and assist with the case.

She says, “My brother was being held at a special immigration detention center in Oakland for no reason. We later found out that he was being detained because of some technicalities. It turned out that all we had to do was re-new his work permit.”

A few months later, her father was detained in the same fashion. He had just begun fasting in observance of Ramadan, the holy month in Islam, when he found himself detained at his job site only to be escorted to the same Oakland county jail that his son had been housed in earlier. Fatima quickly used her previous experience with her brother's case to help a lawyer argue for her father's freedom. Her father was released from the “Immigration Detention Facility” shortly after.

Fatima says she can't understand why her family has become a target. “I just don't want my family to worry all the time.”

Besides being her families legal voice, she is also the first in her immediately family to receive a college education in the United States. She is known to be vocal and opinionated by her peers at De Anza Community College. She got involved on campus by attending anti-war marches and later getting elected into the student government to help mobilize students against tuition fee increases. She even went into labor prematurely in Sacramento while attending a statewide student march to oppose further budget cuts to community colleges two years ago. It coincidentally also happened to be the day that the U.S. began dropping bombs on Iraq to mark the start of the war.

She has had no choice but to cease her campus activism especially after her family was hit with yet another recent wave of encounters by the FBI. This time they were asking the family specifically about Fatima.

“We don't even have our green cards. My family is scared and they're always telling me to be careful.”

“I have nothing to hide. I was just doing what my family dreamed of when they were leaving the [first] war in Iraq. But now it's getting harder for me. I work, I go to school. I'm raising a physically disabled child by myself. I don't have time to worry about the FBI”, she said while assembling some toys for her daughter.

“I'm not trippin' for myself. I just don't want my family to suffer because of me,” she said as she gazed into her daughters eyes, referring to her families concern about possible deportations or other immigration sanctions.

After some time, I signaled to Fatima that I had to leave to go to work. I kissed her beautiful daughter good-bye and made my way to the door. She thanked me for the company and walked me out. “I really don't understand why the school installed a camera on their roof that happens to be pointing towards my house,” she said looking out her window.

Her daughter's eyes followed me out to my car and smiled as I drove off. I caught a glimpse of the camera on the school rooftop and wondered how many other people, like Fatima, are fighting to keep their heads above water.

*Fatima is an alias to protect my friend's identity.

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