Madu's attorney, Glenn Fogle, says the case is "a typical story," one of hundreds in which people spend months and even years in detention, and even get deported, despite obvious mistakes by the government in their cases.

He said he knows of no studies or statistics about such cases, in part because the immigration court system, an administrative process, is less open to public scrutiny than federal criminal courts. Even so, mistakes in immigration cases have been surfacing recently because federal appeals courts are reviewing more immigration cases and finding glaring errors.

"There's been a lot of criticism about the fact that immigration judges are making mistakes," said Ben Johnson, director of the Immigration Policy Center at the National Immigration Law Foundation, citing a stinging recent opinion from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago that said adjudication of immigration cases "has fallen below the minimum standards of legal justice."

Madu, 46, first arrived in the United States in 1981 on a student visa. His girlfriend, Priscilla Ngozi, joined him later, also on a student visa. They were to study at Louisiana's Southern University. Eventually, the two moved to Norcross, reared two daughters and ran a home health care business.

But before all that, in 1986, officials caught Madu working without a permit at a Louisiana Cracker Barrel restaurant, and the following year, a judge allowed him to leave the country voluntarily.

Since then, Madu and Ngozi, who now uses the last name Sterling, have been trying to regain legal status for him and avoid a deportation they say is based on a mistake.

"We are not enemies," said Sterling, who lives in Norcross and runs a home health care business. "We are immigrants. We are human beings, and we want to be treated like human beings."

Officials detained Madu in Atlanta in February 2004 as he arrived for a residency application interview. He had petitioned through Sterling, now his wife, who became a naturalized citizen in April 2003. The two were told that a deportation order from 1987 was still enforceable against Madu.

'Playing with the facts'

Government officials said in court papers that the deportation order was based on Madu's failure to respond to routine letters and forms sent to his U.S. and Nigerian addresses, and letters sent to his attorney, asking for proof that he had left the country.

But Fogle says the government is wrong.

"They're playing with the facts because they know after the fact that he did leave," he said. "They've got proof that he did leave."

Fogle said that, after Madu agreed to leave, he got a visa to go to Mexico. There, he tried to obtain a visa at the U.S. embassy to enter the country legally, but his request was denied and his passport was

Jonathan Madu in a recent photo