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Aber Kawas, a Palestinian-American activist and Democratic Socialist who won her race for New York State Senate District 12 in Queens on Tuesday night, has exploited her father’s deportation from the United States for her own gain for over a decade — claiming he was a victim of anti-Muslim bias and government cruelty.
Court records suggest she left out the most important part — that he was a convicted criminal.
The Post has uncovered that Abdelkareem Kawas, a Jordanian national, arrived in the country in 1989 on a tourist visa and never left. He was then convicted of felony fraud in two separate states before federal authorities removed from the country.
On the campaign trail, Kawas described watching her mother speak to her father through a pane of glass at a detention facility, recalled three-hour bus rides to visit him as a child and pointed to his deportation as proof that America’s immigration system is broken and cruel.
Court records obtained by The Post show Kawas was found guilty in 1995 at the Richmond City Circuit Court in Virginia of making a false statement, a felony offense carrying a maximum sentence of five years.
A decade later, he was indicted in Bergen County, New Jersey, on charges of theft by deception involving the false inflation of property values between $500 and $74,999, the records also show. He pleaded guilty in August 2006 and was sentenced that October to three years in state prison.
Her father was released early, having only served a year and a few months.
His immigration case wound through the courts for years. A federal immigration judge initially ordered him removed after he failed to appear at a 2004 hearing.
He sought cancellation of removal and a hardship waiver, arguing that his deportation would cause extreme suffering to his American family. Those appeals failed.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit denied his final petition for review in December 2008, finding his due process arguments unpersuasive and his legal claims without merit.
He was deported to Jordan under the Bush administration, not under President Trump, whose immigration enforcement Kawas has repeatedly invoked on the campaign trail as a parallel to her own family’s experience.
On her campaign website, Kawas wrote that her father “was detained by ICE and deported from the US by the same cruel immigration system that is harming the people of Queens today.”
In an interview with Jacobin, she said “When I was in seventh grade, my dad was picked up by ICE; he was held in immigration detention for three years and eventually deported. It was very formative for me to go visit him every week in prisons in New York City and detention centers around New Jersey,”
She did not mention his criminal convictions in either account.
In a candidate questionnaire, Kawas acknowledged her father’s repeated incarcerations without elaborating on the underlying offenses.
“As a child of someone who has been incarcerated multiple times, this is deeply personal to me as my visits to my father were a lifeline to maintain our family structure,” she wrote.
Kawas’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Post reached out to the Bergen County Superior Court and Richmond City Circuit Court for the underlying complaints and indictments in both cases.
On the day of the election, Zohran Mamdani, who endorsed her, was actively campaigning in her district.
Kawas, who retweeted an account on X that wrote “Palestine was on the ballot” on Tuesday morning, won her election with 58.33% of the vote.
English (US)