British mum's deportation dilemma

Deborah Aaron faces an agonising choice

By Peter Bowes in Los Angeles

A British woman living in California is facing an impossible dilemma.

Should she leave her home and family in Los Angeles to return to Britain to visit her father who is suffering from terminal cancer ?

I really do feel that I am being punished for life. This is so stressful and so unnecessary

Deborah Aaron, fighting expulsion from the US

It is an acute dilemma because Deborah Aaron is currently fighting a deportation order.

Under US law, she is being expelled from the country because, 24 years ago in East London, she was convicted of a minor drug offence.

Deborah Aaron's father, David Gabbay, in healthier times

She has been told by the US authorities that if she leaves the country voluntarily to be with her 74-year old father, she will not be allowed back into the United States. "People cannot understand," she says.

"People do not believe me when I tell them about this situation. They look at me and say: 'You're joking, you can't be serious?'"

Possession

Deborah Aaron's problems date back to 1976 when she lived in a student house in London.

As a 20-year old, she was fined £10 for possession of 54 grammes of cannabis resin.

She pleaded guilty at the time, but always insisted the drugs did not belong to her.

A year later, she married an American, David Aaron, and eventually moved to California.

The couple made their home in Los Angeles and brought up three children together - all as US citizens.

Deborah Aaron married David, an American citizen, in 1976

The youngest, Jonas, is 15. He has two years left at high school.

Mr and Mrs Aaron are now divorced. The problem for Mrs Aaron is that she was never granted permission to live in the Unites States permanently.

She has managed to stay in the country for such a long time through a series of temporary visas and the granting of special permission on humanitarian grounds.

However, a tough law was passed in 1996 designed to clampdown on foreigners with drug convictions who want to live in the US.

Mrs Aaron has lodged an appeal against a deportation order which was issued last year.

While she waits for a decision, Deborah Aaron is struggling to cope with the news that her father, David Gabbay, who lives in Birmingham, is dying.

"It's hard dealing with somebody being terminally ill when you're on the other side of the world," explains Mrs Aaron.

"It's almost impossible dealing with it...when you can't go and see them at all because if you do, you lose your home."

Appeals to politicians

Letters to politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have met with plenty of sympathy but little practical help.

Professor El Fadl: Congress has made this area of the law quite inhospitable

The UK Government says that it is a matter for the American authorities.

A US Government official has indicated to the BBC that there is little chance of Mrs Aaron avoiding deportation.

There is no discretionary procedure to allow her to visit the UK while a final decision is being made.

The act of leaving the country would be seen as abandonning the fight to stay in the US.

Dr Khaled Abou El Fadl, Professor of Immigration at the University of California Los Angeles, believes it will be extremely difficult for Mrs Aaron to win her case.

"Congress has made this area of the law quite inhospitable to anyone who's made a mistake in their life," he says.

"As a matter of cleaning up the country, that's the way the law is."

The recent controversy in Britain, regarding the forthcoming return visit by the American boxer Mike Tyson, has further fuelled Mrs Aaron's frustration.

She is angry that the convicted rapist has apparently managed to convince the UK Government that he should be treated as a special case.

"Here we have somebody whose criminal record is far more serious than mine," she says.

"There he's going to go and make lots of money and here am I with my work permit taken away from me. I can't work over here. The discrepancy and the hypocrisy is outrageous to me."

Attempt to quash conviction

Mrs Aaron's Los Angeles-based lawyers, who are working on the case without pay, are in an uphill battle trying to get her original drug conviction quashed - in fact, completely expunged from the record as if it never happened.

That may pave the way for a change of heart by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Deborah Aaron's lawyers face an uphill battle

It is a desperate strategy for the legal team.

It involves trying to persuade the courts in Britain to review a minor cannabis case dating back nearly a quarter of a century.

The law firm has also been doing its own detective work in an effort to root out new evidence.

It is currently attempting to track down the original arresting officer, a British police constable who is now believed to be retired.

The aim is to show that Deborah Gabbay, as she was then called, was an innocent victim of a police raid which targeted the wrong house.

Mrs Aaron hopes to hear any day whether she will be allowed to visit her father in Birmingham - without forfeiting her life in America.

"I really do feel that I am being punished for life," she argues.

"This is so stressful and so unnecessary."