(JTA) — The widow of a rabbi killed in the attack on the Mumbai Chabad House is having immigration trouble that could keep her away from her children.
The U.S. Customs Department has charged Frumet Teitelbaum, 37, an Israeli citizen, with overusing her tourist visa to travel back and forth from Israel to Brooklyn, where her eight children aged 2 to 14 live with her late husband’s family. Though Teitelbaum had a valid travel visa, her frequent travel to visit her children caused Customs officials to stamp it with restrictions limiting her time in the United States.
The children are attending school in New York.
Brooklyn-born Rabbi Leibish Teitelbaum, 37, was among six Jews killed in the 2008 attack on Chabad’s Nariman House, one of 10 Mumbai sites under siege during a three-day attack by an Islamist Pakistani group that left 166 dead and hundreds injured. Rabbi Teitelbaum had traveled to Mumbai to work as a kosher food supervisor.
Frumet Teitelbaum must leave the United States in early April or she will be deported, the New York Post reported.
Attorney Michael Wildes told the newspaper that he will appeal to the Immigration Court on Teitelbaum’s behalf so that she can receive a green card and permanent residency under a post-9/11 law designed to assist the families of terrorist victims
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