On Oct. 9, Maggie Shama and her husband, Mohamed Shama, arrived at the Raleigh-Durham U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office for their 9 a.m. interview, thrilled to be taking a step toward obtaining citizenship for Mohamed.
By 10:15 a.m., Mohamed was under custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Joint interviews are routine — a way to verify that a marriage is authentic in the pursuit of a green card. Couples are often interviewed separately in the process. That morning, Maggie went first.
“The interviewer looked at me at the end, he goes: ‘Look, I’m gonna be honest with you … when I ask your husband these questions, unless he answers something so completely different than what you answered,’ he goes, ‘You guys are passing,’” Maggie recalled in a phone interview with The 9th Street Journal.
Before Mohamed’s turn, Maggie kissed her husband of seven years, taking a seat in the waiting room, and said, “Baby, we got this. Go do this.” Unbeknownst to the couple, Maggie’s kiss to Mohamed was “goodbye.”
Mohamed, who goes by Shama, came to the U.S. from Egypt with his then-wife in 2012 and has lived in Durham since 2016. He worked as the general manager at AMC Southpoint 17 movie theaters in Durham.
Shama applied for asylum but was denied, Maggie said. Although the pair has spent years trying to resolve Shama’s legal status through formal procedures, a visa overstay prompted his deportation order.
The 9th Street Journal reached out to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for comment on Shama’s case. “He entered the U.S. on a B2-tourist visa that required him to depart the U.S. by May 25, 2014. After more than a decade of illegally living in the U.S., ICE arrested him and placed him in removal proceedings,” assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin said. Shama has no criminal record.
As of Oct. 21, authorities are holding Shama at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga., where he faces deportation.
Shama has two daughters, aged 10 and 13, from his previous marriage. Maggie met Shama while she was working as an hourly manager at the Durham AMC. “He’d always come see movies, and we would just start chatting up a storm about movies and our love for Disney and all this other stuff,” Maggie said. When a manager position opened up, Maggie encouraged him to apply.
“Ironically enough, I was his trainer,” she said.
Maggie suffers from spinal stenosis. On her worst days, Shama has to move Maggie’s legs for her to help her get dressed.
Shama was recognized by former Durham Mayor Steve Schewel for his commitment at AMC to hiring individuals with special needs and ensuring they have equal opportunities for employment, according to a GoFundMe page launched on Shama’s behalf.
“People just love being around (Shama) because he’s just that kind of guy that makes you happier,” Shama’s close friend and former coworker Raul Navedo said. Navedo and his wife, Desiree, have been managing GoFundMe donations.
The fundraising page has surpassed its first two goals, raising more than $40,000 to cover legal fees and family expenses.
Shama’s path forward remains uncertain, like the hundreds of other people housed at the Stewart Detention Center.
The Stewart Detention Center is one of the largest U.S. ICE detention facilities, sitting in rural southwest Georgia. The nearest big city, Columbus, is about an hour away. The center has a maximum capacity of about 1,900 detainees and held approximately 2,219 people per day in April, according to average daily population calculations by the Harvard Kennedy School based on ICE’s public detention data.
Immigration lawyer Marty Rosenbluth, whose office is five minutes from the facility in Lumpkin, Ga., has seen an increase in severe overcrowding on both the men and women’s sides. The attorney has more than 15 years of experience representing detained people in deportation proceedings. At Stewart Detention Center, staff turnover rates are high, medical care for detainees is limited, at best, and meals are poor, Rosenbluth said.
“All of my clients report that there are people sleeping on the floor in their units, that there are people sleeping in the break room, that there are people sleeping in the lunch room, that there are people just sleeping all over the place because they don’t have enough beds,” Rosenbluth said.
While Shama has phone privileges and outside time, he sleeps on a mattress on the floor in a holding area with about 40 to 45 detainees, according to his wife. “It’s a testament to my husband — he’s already made friends with some of the detainees, and they look out for him,” Maggie said.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment on Stewart Detention Center conditions.
Since Trump assumed office in January, ICE arrests have doubled. Unauthorized crossings at the southern border have plummeted, as well, under the administration’s aggressive policies.
“[The Trump Administration] is just completely doing everything they can to deport as many people as possible with no regard at all towards due process and no regard at all towards what the law actually says,” Rosenbluth said.
Aspects of Trump’s fast-track deportation policies have been struck down in federal court for trampling on individuals’ rights to defend themselves in a fair hearing.
“They basically completely eviscerated people’s ability to get due process in the immigration court,” Rosenbluth said.
Between waiting for Shama’s calls, coordinating with Navedo, responding to social media messages, contacting state legislators and consulting lawyers, Maggie’s days are chaotic.
The nights are silent.
“It’s awful,” she said, “The laughter’s not here right now.” Maggie and Shama bonded over their love of film. Where some couples have a “song,” they have a “movie”: “The Greatest Showman.”
“It was everything that we love in general,” Maggie said. “It was a happy movie… but, more importantly, it was all about the dreaming and making the dreams a reality.”
They would laugh and dance — Maggie with her arms — and belt out the movie’s soundtrack.
“There are days where a two-hour movie sometimes takes us two-and-a-half hours to get through because we have to keep rewinding ’cause we keep cracking each other up. And it’s all just gone right now.”
Above: Mohamed Shama, as pictured on a GoFundMe page established on behalf of the Shama family by Dani Christian and Raul Navedo.
