Countering the Smear Campaign Against My Husband
Exposing DHS’s false claims against Muhammad Zahid Chaudhry, a man of service, integrity, and decades of honorable community life.
Friends,
The smear campaign against Zahid has begun.
Here, I’m setting the record straight. Anyone who wishes to see our legal filings, including sworn testimony and countless letters of support, is welcome to contact me and I’ll share them with you. You can also find more backstory and legal history about the extensive bad faith and racism in targeting Zahid, at the legacy website www.KeepZahidHome.org.
DHS’s press release is deliberately inflammatory—using words like “illegal,” “fraudster,” “sob story”—and designed to frame Zahid as both criminal and undeserving. Here’s how we can counter, clearly and forcefully, while keeping credibility intact:
Core Talking Points
1. Zahid’s Service and Integrity
Muhammad Zahid Chaudhry is a decorated, disabled U.S. Army veteran, honorably discharged for injuries sustained in service.
He has always entered the U.S. legally and has never been convicted of a crime in the United States.
FBI record checks consistently clear him of wrongdoing.
He himself tracked down and disclosed his old Australian conviction records to U.S. authorities—an act of integrity, not deception. Using self-reported information against him is the opposite of justice.
2. The Smear Campaign Itself
DHS’s press release proves our point: this is a political smear campaign, not a fair legal process.
Instead of focusing on real threats to public safety, DHS is recycling decades-old allegations, cherry-picking details, and attacking Zahid’s character while ignoring his decades of honorable service and community leadership.
The use of demeaning terms like “sob story” in an official government communication is beneath the dignity of the United States. It shows hostility, not justice.
3. Contradictions and Bad Faith
DHS claims Zahid is both unfit to remain in the U.S. and simultaneously processed his naturalization applications, issuing interview notices as recently as August 2025.
They cannot have it both ways: either he is ineligible, or he is being considered for citizenship. This contradiction exposes their bad faith.
DHS/ICE have already admitted in other contexts to weaponizing routine immigration interviews as “bait and switch” traps—this is part of a documented pattern.
4. The Broader Pattern
Washingtonians should see this for what it is: political targeting of outspoken immigrants and Muslims under the guise of “enforcement.”
This is part of a broader campaign of intimidation against immigrant communities, not a legitimate public safety action.
ICE detention is being used as punishment for people who comply with the law—Zahid showed up for his interview, and ICE literally ambushed him as he exited.
5. Faith in America
The Constitution, the rule of law, and the promise of fairness require that the government apply the law consistently and with integrity.
If DHS were truly committed to protecting the country, they would focus on genuine threats, not on disabled veterans in wheelchairs who have served their communities for decades.
What makes America strong is not cruelty—it’s fairness, dignity, and honoring those who serve.
Sample Quick Responses (for press or social media)
On the smear campaign: “DHS’s press release reads more like a political hit job than an official communication. It’s full of inflammatory language and ignores the facts of Zahid’s honorable service and peaceful life in Washington.”
On Zahid’s past disclosures: “Zahid is being punished for his own integrity—he himself disclosed old foreign records to U.S. authorities. Turning a man’s honesty into the reason to attack him is the opposite of justice.”
On contradictions: “If DHS truly believed Zahid had no right to remain, why did they continue processing his citizenship applications and issue interview notices this month? They can’t have it both ways—this is bad faith.”
On community ties: “Zahid has lived in Washington for decades, raised a family, served his neighbors, and been entrusted with leadership roles by the State of Washington itself. DHS ignores all of that because it doesn’t fit their smear campaign.”
On America’s principles: “This is not about law and order—it’s about whether America still honors fairness, service, and integrity. If a disabled veteran can be targeted this way, no immigrant family in Washington is safe.”
About the “fraud” in Australia:
Zahid, as a young man, worked as a taxi driver in Australia after he emigrated to that country to pursue computer science. This was at a time when immigrant taxi drivers in Australia were routinely physically assaulted, robbed of fares, and even killed.
Zahid, who suffered many fare evasions and beatings at the hands of his white passengers - mouthfuls of blood, dozens of times - tried to take them to court many, many times, and received no justice. The racist enforcement of the law was terribly plain, such that even the Indian ambassador commented that “it is a good day in Australia when one of our own is not murdered.”
One day, a customer hired Zahid for what he promised was a short ride. He lied. The fare on that ride was $400, and Zahid still had to pay gas and rent and all of the expenses of running the taxi. The passenger left his passport as surety and went inside, promising to return with the money. He never came back.
(This was at a time when replacing a passport was $50.)
Zahid tried to return the passport. He was accused by the officials of attempting to use it. Knowing he would get no justice if he fought their wrongful accusations, he accepted a plea bargain. He pled guilty, and they gave him a few weeks of community service basically for the optics.
Again. HE DID NOTHING WRONG. In fact, he was the only victim in that case.
So. On paper, Zahid “pled guilty” to fraud in Australia. It was treated as a misdemeanor charge, a “Rising of the Court,” functionally equivalent to a parking ticket here. It also took place in the mid-1990s.
For DHS to be weaponizing this matter against him, when it has already been litigated and found to be irrelevant to Zahid’s naturalization, reveals their corruption and bad faith.
The matter of “falsely claiming citizenship” I addressed in my last post. Expert testimony IN THE RECORD proves Zahid never made that mark.
Zahid’s injuries. He’s been in a wheelchair since long before I knew him. I take him to his VA appointments for pain medication and wheelchair repairs regularly. He’s 100% service-connected disabled. He wanted to make a career of the Army - he loved it - before his injuries. The fact that they’re trying to weaponize his pain against him, and argue that he’s defrauded the government by being RIGHTFULLY compensated for immense pain and suffering, and his literal crippling and loss of mobility - really?
Tell that to ANY disabled veteran, or anyone who knows and loves one, and see what response you get.
Whatever “settlement” they’re talking about, neither I nor Zahid know anything about it.
This administration will do anything, sink to any level, dehumanize any honorable service, reveal their faithlessness and hypocrisy and falsity with every word, in order to try to prevent public awareness of what they’re truly up to.
Don’t let them get away with it. Don’t let yourself be deceived.
As I write this to you, Zahid suffers under conditions that would be prosecuted as animal abuse if inflicted on pets. THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of human beings are being kept in these conditions in this country - with no recourse, no oversight, and no hope. We are kept spinning our wheels in legal systems rapidly being turned against us, while this weaponization and abuse of power churns on and on, with nearly limitless funding, and every incentive to go on the attack, smear Zahid’s character, and hide the truth of what they’re really doing.
As Zahid himself said to me last night, “When corporations are allowed to privately profit off of the deprivation of the people of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, there is no end to the oppression that will result.”
First they came for the immigrants. Then they came for the dissidents. Then…?
Friends are asking me how Zahid is. Honestly I don’t know what to tell you. He’s in a concrete box with very little, very terrible food, no access to the law library they brag so much about, very little access to communication, no safety, no trust, no one he loves, no one who loves him.
He has no meds, not for his thyroid, not to prevent the incipient blindness, not to ease the acid burns he suffers in his chest day and night.
He’s adjusting to the longer-term sense of the time he’s going to have to be in there. There’s very little functional hope. Even if he agrees to go abroad - which he hasn’t - they still let people rot in there for months or more before letting them go.
There’s no timeframe for an end to this. It’s terrible.
WHICH IS WHY WE FIGHT.
Not just for him. For EVERYONE kept in these conditions - awaiting no trial, accused of no crime, deprived of dignity and freedom for no good reason.
Call your elected officials. Call the Attorney General’s office and ask him to take up Zahid’s case: Zahid is a sworn Officer of the Great State of Washington, a Boundary Review Board Commissioner currently. And he was handpicked and trusted by Governor Inslee himself as a Commissioner on Disability and Unemployment. His decades of honorable community service speaks for itself.
Zahid’s story is not just about one man—it’s about what kind of country we are willing to become. If a decorated, disabled U.S. Army veteran in a wheelchair can be smeared, shackled, and left to suffer in a concrete box, then no immigrant family, no dissenter, no vulnerable neighbor is safe.
But we are not powerless. We have our voices, our networks, our elected officials—and we have the truth. The Constitution does not belong to DHS, ICE, or any administration. It belongs to the people. And it is our duty to demand that it be honored.
I am asking you—friends, neighbors, Washingtonians, Americans—to stand with us. Share Zahid’s story. Call your elected officials. Refuse to let smear campaigns replace justice. Together, we can hold the line against cruelty, and insist on fairness, dignity, and integrity in this country we love.
This is why we fight. For Zahid. For every family in detention. For the soul of America itself.
