Judge: Government cannot deport for failure to report new address

ATLANTA - An immigration judge has ruled that the government cannot deport a legal immigrant from the West Bank for failing to report a change of address. <br> <br> Judge William A. Cassidy said Monday the punishment of deportation would apply only to those who ``willfully&#39;&#39; broke a law requiring immigrants to alert authorities within 10 days of moving. <br> <br> The Immigration and Naturalization Service detained Thar Abdel-Jaber, 30, after police in Raleigh, N.C., stopped him for driving four miles an hour over the speed limit March 12. Officers found several thousand dollars and maps of North Carolina with red circles around several cities. <br> <br> Abdel-Jaber said the FBI and INS asked him about ``what happened in New York on Sept. 11.&#39;&#39; They also asked about the money and maps and whether he was a pilot. <br> <br> He said he sold electronic equipment at flea markets in several states, and the circles on the map showed the markets, while the money was for stereos and speakers he hoped to buy and resell. <br> <br> The FBI found no links to terrorism, but the INS jailed him for two months after learning he had failed to notify the agency of a move from Florida to Virginia. <br> <br> A government attorney, Nancy Waller, argued that Abdel-Jaber should be deported because he ``uses multiple addresses at his own choosing.&#39;&#39; Since arriving in the United States in 1998, she said, he has used the address of a brother-in-law in New York, a friend in Durham, N.C., and his place in Chesterfield, Va., to receive INS paperwork. <br> <br> Abdel-Jaber&#39;s attorney, Charles Kuck, said it made no sense for the government to deport his client for failing to obey a law it never told him about in the first place. <br> <br> Cassidey said the government stopped airing public service announcements about the reporting requirement many years ago. He said the last such deportation case his research turned up was in 1958. <br> <br> Attorney General John Ashcroft said July 22 that the federal government would change about 30 immigration forms to more clearly notify noncitizens of the address-change law. <br> <br> The Justice Department cited the case of a Salvadoran immigrant who did not notify the INS of a new address. The agency wanted to deport her in absentia. But the Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that the INS could not deport the immigrant because it had not properly notified her of its plans.