She fell victim to a green card scam years ago. Now, an Altadena mom awaits her fate in an ICE detention center

When South Asians migrate to the U.S., they gravitate toward other immigrants from their community. In Artesia, shopfronts pay homage to Hindu gods. People congregate in Pakistani restaurants in Hawthorne, sipping steaming chai while cricket matches play on a TV. And in Little Bangladesh, a little pocket in Koreatown, the curly Bengali font stands out from storefronts.

But, within some of these spaces, unscrupulous scammers prey on those new immigrants, taking advantage of their limited English.

Under past administrations, that typically would mean a protracted case in immigration court to try to rectify their application process for permanent residency. But the Trump administration’s ramp up of immigration enforcement has raised the stakes for people like Masuma Khan, a 64-year-old Altadena resident who immigrated from Bangladesh in 1997. Years ago, she was scammed by a “very, very friendly” Bengali man who promised to secure her green card. Now, she’s being held in an ICE facility in California City after being detained by ICE agents earlier this month during a routine check-in appointment.

“ My mom, she spoke very little English at the time, and she had zero knowledge of how the immigration system works,” her daughter, Riya Khan, said. “My mom is a very naive person. She tends to trust people easily. She is extremely friendly.”

Masuma Khan has lived in the U.S. since 1997.

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Courtesy Riya Khan

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Masuma Khan and her family later would find out this man created a false identity for her, Nur Jahan, and filed a case on her behalf seeking asylum. He also created a fake passport she never saw, Riya Khan said. He also took her to interviews with immigration agents and acted as her interpreter.

 ”All the notices, all the letters that came from [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] went to his address,” Riya Khan said.

When the asylum application was denied, he advised Masuma Khan to lay low. She would only realize she had a deportation order on her case when she tried to gain U.S. citizenship through her husband, who immigrated here in the 2010s. Since then, she has worked with multiple attorneys to try to become naturalized. Since 2020, USCIS has required her to appear for annual check-ins at their offices.

This year, she was detained.

Rep. Judy Chu, who represents Altadena, has been trying to get information about Masuma Khan’s case. But her office told LAist that getting information from ICE has become “increasingly delayed” because of the government shutdown, worsening their ability to do oversight.

Sen. Adam Schiff’s office told LAist in a statement that he “believes strongly that Ms. Khan should receive a fair and prompt hearing and has been working with Rep. Chu and others to get answers from ICE and ensure that she is treated properly and receives timely access to her medication during her distressing detainment.”

Masuma Khan with her daughter, Riya.

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Courtesy Riya Khan

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In a written statement citing the fake name the scammer filed, Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said, “On Oct. 6, ICE arrested Nur Zahan, an illegal alien from Bangladesh, who had had a final order of removal from a judge since 1999. She exhausted all due process and appeals. On Nov. 26, 2018, an immigration judge issued her a final order of removal.”

“Seventeen years later, she moved to reopen her case with the Board of Immigration Appeals and the court affirmed her order of removal. Additionally, she filed a petition with the Ninth Circuit, and that court denied her petition,” according to the statement.

On Thursday, Masuma Khan’s attorney filed a temporary restraining order, according to her family’s immigration advocates.

Fraudsters prey on South Asian immigrants

Shakeel Syed, executive director of local nonprofit South Asian Network, said scammers prey on immigrants from South Asia because they don’t have adequate knowledge of the legal system and they’re afraid of working with a lawyer because of their limited English skills. That leads them to work with other South Asians “by virtue of language and culture,” he said.

His organization currently is helping three families who have fallen prey to scammers, including Masuma Khan. In one of the cases, an immigrant paid around $50,000 to a scammer to gain permanent residency. Riya Khan said her mother also paid the scammer money, but she’s unsure how much because she was a young child at the time.

Syed, who has visited the California City detention center where Masuma Khan is being held, said ICE detention centers are “deliberately misorganized” and “inhumane.” He added that they are “ deliberately” kept in these conditions “to dehumanize them, to strip their basic human dignity.”

Conditions at the facility

Masuma Khan did not get a change of clothes for three days, Syed said. At the detention center, she has had to make do with mostly canned vegetables for food.

“ She's not getting much protein because she was getting ham and such and she asked for halal food, but the halal food that they're providing her is mostly just canned veggies,” Riya Khan said.

To make matters worse, Masuma Khan wasn’t given her high blood pressure medication for six days, her daughter said.

 ”Without her medication, she was having a really hard time breathing. She was having a tough time speaking,” Riya Khan said.

Her legs also became severely swollen and it hurt to walk, Riya Khan added, and yet she was denied access to a doctor.

Masuma Khan currently is detained at an ICE facility in California City.

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Courtesy Riya Khan

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Add to all of this the additional trauma of being displaced from her home due to the Eaton Fire. While the home she shared with her husband didn’t burn, it did suffer ash and smoke damage.

“ My mom has spoken to me a lot about how traumatic that experience has been,” Riya Khan said about her mother’s experience evacuating from the fire.

Now, the family is fighting to rebuild their lives on two fronts as their matriarch awaits her fate.

“ Every time I see her, she's shaking, and she has been put in a prison where she doesn't belong,” Riya Khan said. “She doesn't have any criminal history. She's never been a threat to anybody. She was not a flight risk when they took her.”

And as a kidney transplant patient, Riya Khan is worried she won’t see her mom again if she’s deported.

“ I'm immunocompromised. I would never be able to see her again because I can't go back to Bangladesh,” she said.