THE 'FREE STOOGES'
ICE doofs in court to relive deport con giving them the slip at JFK
What a bunch of lamebrains. Three bungling immigration officers let a routine deportation turn into Three Stooges-style farce when they let an unhandcuffed detainee give them the slip during a layover at JFK Airport in March — while they were off getting coffee.
The ICE knuckleheads were forced to recount the embarrassing March 27 blunder in court Wednesday, admitting that they agreed to let Senegalese felon Mohamadou Lamine Mbacke wander 20 yards away to chat with a “cousin” — and then two of them headed off to grab a cup of joe. “He said he saw someone he knew — his cousin,” said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officer Scott Hall, who testified in Brooklyn federal court alongside fellow Detroit-based officers Joseph Comaj and Ahmed Lassiter.
“We started walking away, and I noticed the subject wasn’t there anymore. And I said, ‘Hey, where is he?’ ”
The 31-year-old Mbacke was, in fact, sprinting through the halls of the international terminal before exiting and jumping into a cab — while the nitwit feds were still searching the terminal and asking workers to page him.
“We took an immediate quick look around and I said, ‘He’s gone, get your stuff,’ ” said Hall. “We did a broader search of the area and couldn’t find him. I went back to the gate area and had him paged.”
Meanwhile, despite having no cash, ID or phone, Mbacke managed to get a cabby to drive him to a friend’s place in Harlem. Then, via a Chinatown bus, he traveled to Chicago, where he was arrested three days later.
Hall was forced to relive the whole humiliating incident in real time, narrating security video of Mbacke making them look like schmucks.
“That’s the subject walking, now running, on the left-hand side of the
screen,” Hall testified, clenching his jaw as the footage played.
Mbacke grinned back from the defense table.
The three ICE stooges also admitted they took more than 30 minutes to alert the Port Authority PD — because, Hall admitted, he didn’t know it existed.
“We don’t have a Port Authority in Detroit,” Hall said. “When I go to an airport, I think security. I think TSA.”
Comaj claimed they dragged their feet because they were hoping he’d just show up. “There was hope that possibly this guy was in the bathroom and he was gonna walk out any second,” he said.
The officers said it is standard for detainees to be left uncuffed at airports because cuffs make other passengers uncomfortable — and to keep the deportee calm.
“I want them to feel as human as possible. I don’t want to cause a scene at the airport,” said Lassiter.
He added that he also tried to put Mbacke at ease by buying him a coffee and watched a basketball game with him while the other two officers were off at Buffalo Wild Wings.
“I let him use my phone. He was nervous about not having clothes or money,” said Lassiter.
Despite what the testimony reflected about the agents’ actions, they aren’t the ones on trial — that's Mbacke, who is charged with escaping custody and faces up to a year behind bars if convicted.
Mbacke, who has multiple convictions across the US for weapons possession and other charges, will be deported afterward.
In a bizarre twist, his defense attorney asked Comaj if he’d ever joked with Mbacke about taking bribes from detainees to let them avoid deportation.
“You never joked with him about taking money from deportees in exchange for not deporting them?” defense attorney Jan Rostal quizzed him. “You never joked about taking money from Mexicans?” Comaj insisted he had not.
The three agents all vol-v unteered to go on the assisted-deportation trip, with Hall testifying that he volunteered for the “over-time.”