Fenway teacher faces deportation

Obain Attouoman's Everett apartment is cluttered with moving boxes, bags, and books. Despite efforts by elected officials and others to keep him in the country, the clock is winding down for the 42-year-old Fenway High School special-education teacher, who faces deportation March 7.

Attouoman is spending his vacation week meeting with friends and bracing himself for an emotional goodbye at school.

"The hardest part is going to be looking at my students' reaction," Attouoman said as his voice cracked. "In a way, I'm betraying them. It's the middle of the school year. I'm going to tell them that I will never forget what they did for me. I will go away knowing that I'm leaving behind me here these adolescents who represent the idealism that founded the United States."

Attouoman's case has gained influential supporters such as US Representative Michael E. Capuano, Superintendent of Schools Thomas W. Payzant, and Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who wrote letters to officials in Washington on the teacher's behalf.

"I've been fighting with immigration for his stay to be extended to the end of the year," Menino said. "This is not America. America is built on immigration. Why are we so anxious about sending this guy back to the country, especially when we all fear what will happen to him if he gets back."

Attouoman's fight to stay in the country started in 2001, when he missed an asylum hearing before an immigration judge because he misread the date. A judge ordered him deported to his native Ivory Coast, and he lost two appeals. Since then, he has won temporary reprieves after students and other supporters rallied on his behalf.

Councilors Maura Hennigan and Chuck Turner have tried to contact the Rev. Eugene Rivers to ask him to reach out to President Bush.

"He has a good connection with President Bush," Hennigan said of Rivers. "We're trying to think outside the box here. I just feel that we have to appeal to someone down in Washington. We're not throwing in the towel, we're going to keep plugging away in other avenues."

Attouoman and his legal team have looked into the possibility of relocating to Great Britain, Canada, and Germany, but his lawyer, Tullio Capasso, said the prospects look grim. If Attouoman does not find another country by March 4, he'll return to the Ivory Coast, where he fears he will be a target in the war-torn West African nation.

Capasso said they are now down to only two options.

"We're trying to get a senator, hopefully Senator [John] Kerry, to introduce a private bill on his behalf. We're doing this with a lot of the assistance of the public. We're getting a lot of calls from the public," said Capasso.

Capasso said that his office has received about 100 phone calls and e-mails from across the nation concerning the case.

Another option, he said, is to lobby the Department of Homeland Security and other top Washington officials to stop the deportation order.

Fenway High School headmaster Peggy Kemp estimated that students and parents have sent about 1,600 postcards to Kerry, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, asking them to intervene.

Faculty and students at the school and Boston Arts Academy, who rallied several times to keep the teacher in the country, plan to stage another demonstration at Government Center next week.

"I did not really commit a crime that would warrant me my deportation under these current circumstances," Attouoman said. "Deporting me back to the Ivory Coast, an unsafe country, and putting my life at risk even though I have not done anything unlawful does not reflect the values of the United States,"

Attouoman was held in Suffolk County Jail for three months on a warrant for deportation and released last March. He said that the agency does not "look at me as a human being, with a life and feelings and history."

The spokeswoman for the Boston field office of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Paula Grenier, said, "Everything is proceeding as planned. ICE's role is to carry out the immigration judge's order, which is a removal order."

In Boston, removal orders have nearly doubled in the last few years.

Madison Park can be reached at mpark@globe.com.