Instead of getting the card, Fevzi Yildiz was handcuffed and thrown in a detention cell.
He never got to hold his daughter or hug his wife again.
The 44-year-old restaurant worker sat in jail for the next four months - including 44 consecutive days in solitary confinement - before being forced, kicking and screaming, onto a plane back to Turkey.
His imprisonment and deportation has devastated his wife, Kathleen Yildiz, 30, a secretary born and raised in Gloucester City, N.J.
Working more than 70 hours a week at two jobs to support her daughter, Yildiz can't afford to buy a plane ticket to Turkey. Her husband is barred from returning to the United States for 10 years.
"They literally took my husband from me. I'm robbed of my spouse and she's robbed of her father," Yildiz said, pointing to her daughter Anna Elvan, who will turn one next week and last saw her father when she was six weeks old. "It's destroyed us."
Their lawyer, Eleni Boyadjis, did not return phone calls.
Three strict immigration laws passed by Congress in 1996 have wreaked havoc on families like the Yildizs.
Armed with stories of personal devastation, hundreds of immigrants and immigrant advocates rallied yesterday in Washington, D.C., to push Congress to change the 1996 laws. The rally is part of a new national movement called "Fix '96."
Complex and far-reaching, the laws made it much easier for the INS to imprison and deport immigrants who came here illegally, those who file for asylum, and those who committed certain crimes at any point during their stay here. The laws took away most of the power of judges to use their discretion in deciding cases. They also made it much more difficult for people who are deported to return to this country.
