NEW YORK: Born deaf, Fahmida Ferdousi Saki has finally begun to hear the words spoken to her. She can form her own sentences, too, as a result of a medical procedure readily available in this city but absent in her native Bangladesh.

But the progress the 8-year-old Brooklyn girl has made is about to come to a halt, with her family ordered by a judge to return to Bangladesh after they became ensnared in a federal effort to strictly enforce immigration laws as they apply to Muslim men.

The decision is all the more harsh to the ears of Fahmida's father, Mohammed Jafar Alam, because the state Labour Department has yet to review the application that his employer submitted in 2001 to allow him to remain here, and is not likely to until at least a month after the family's deportation deadline.

"There's no question but that Fahmida simply must be permitted to remain here for her ongoing rehabilitation," said Dr Christopher Linstrom of New York Eye & Ear Infirmary, who implanted a device known as a cochlear implant in Fahmida's brain in December 2001. The tiny apparatus, coupled with a small computer attached to a strap around the neck, allows her to hear and decode sounds through her brain.

"There's no programme to help her in Bangladesh," Linstrom said. "She will fall back to the level of a non-user. It's sad that a child has to pay a heavy price for technicalities in immigration law. Her father is not a terrorist - by any stretch."

In April 1999, Alam, 39, and his wife, Ferdous Ara Mitu, 25, secured a temporary visa and moved to the United States with their daughter for an operation. She now attends St. Francis De Sales School for the Deaf.

Alam all along has been able to make his $687 a month rent, working as a painter and bricklayer. His troubles with immigration began when he sought to comply with a special- registration directive last year by the Department of Homeland Security aimed at thousands of male immigrants ages 16 and older from Muslim countries. By the time Alam showed up for his required interview in lower Manhattan, his travel visa had run out.-Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service (c) Newsday.