‘Never thought they were going to betray me like this’: Man who helped convict terrorists as a CIA informant is detained by ICE while renewing papers

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested Blerim Skoro outside an immigration office in New Jersey this month as he renewed his papers. Skoro is 55, was born in Kosovo, works as a cab driver on Staten Island in New York, and has an American wife and three children.

His lawyers filed papers in federal court to stop the government from sending him out of the country. They say he spent years working as a CIA informant after the September 11 attacks and helped convict terrorists. They say he was promised the chance to live in the United States.

In a phone interview from Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey, Skoro told CBS News, “I never thought they were going to betray me like this.” He also said, “Please, if I die, I should die in this country so my kids can bury me.” 

Prison records and FBI files name Skoro as an informant in terrorism cases

A federal judge granted him a deferral of removal in 2022 because of the risk he would be captured and tortured if sent back to Kosovo. Lawyers say that the ruling came in part from his help in the arrests of members of al Qaeda, al-Shabaab, and Hezbollah.

Skoro’s ties to U.S. officials began after he went to jail for moving drugs in 2000, FBI documents show. He said he was trying to support his children and his parents, who had fled the Kosovo conflict in the 1990s as refugees. He was caught taking heroin overseas for an Albanian criminal group.

Raised as a Muslim, he was welcomed by a group of Islamic radicals in a Manhattan prison. After the September 11 attacks, he said the CIA asked him to use that link. While held at FCI Allenwood in Pennsylvania from 2002 to 2006, Skoro said he gathered information for the FBI on Faysal Galab of the Lackawanna Six, Randall “Ismail” Royer of the Virginia jihad network, and Hezbollah member Junuz Fuaz.

Heavily redacted FBI records from 2004 list Skoro as an informant in a case targeting Osama bin Laden. The files say he gave “actionable” and “reliable” information, including details of a “Syrian training camp.” He thought the work would shorten his sentence, but he was deported to Kosovo in 2007. He claims CIA officials told him to join al Qaeda from the Balkans. He returned to the United States in 2014.

Skoro claims he worked undercover for the CIA from 2007 to 2009. He said he traveled to an ISIS camp in Syria and also worked in Lebanon, Jordan, Pakistan, Egypt, and Kosovo. Photos and videos from that time show him in Middle Eastern settings with known terrorists. The material was used in the 2024 documentary The Accidental Spy and in an episode of The Shawn Ryan Show last year.

He appears to have been involved in the arrest of Betim Kaziu, a Brooklyn man sentenced to 27 years in prison after trying to buy weapons for al-Shabaab to use against U.S. troops. In a December 2020 legal statement, Skoro wrote that he secretly called his CIA handler to give his location while Kaziu stayed at his Kosovo apartment. That led to Kaziu’s arrest in July 2009 with a rifle, ammunition, and grenades.

Skoro shared emails dated September 24, 2009, with a man he said was his CIA handler named “Chris.” One email said: “I was very glad to see our friend Kaziu is now back in the States.” 

The CIA did not respond to a request for comment. Skoro also claims he helped stop shipments of uranium to Kosovo that could have been used in a dirty bomb. After he returned to the United States, he said he gave more information to the FBI and New York police starting in April 2015 when an ISIS recruiter contacted him.

His earlier lawyer Joshua Dratel told CBS News that for the past decade Skoro has led a “completely law-abiding, productive life with his family after a harrowing experience that he performed for the United States with great courage and skill.” A habeas corpus petition filed after the recent arrest says he “worked for the CIA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Drug Enforcement Agency over the course of nearly a decade” and performed “devoted and heroic work as a United States law enforcement agent.”

Skoro’s wife, Susan, was with him at the Elizabeth, New Jersey, office on August 3 when officers took him. She said they came to the desk, put him in a room and drove him away. “They betrayed him. He’s done his time. He almost lost his life, and nobody gives a s–t. He deserves a pardon,” she said. She added, “He can’t get deported anywhere safely. We’re always looking over our shoulders.”

Skoro first came to the United States in 1994 seeking asylum after leaving the Yugoslav Army. He said he had seen soldiers commit rape and murder children. He said his cover was later broken, and he was shot in the leg during an attempt to kill him in Kosovo. He then entered the United States illegally through Canada in 2014. ICE took him into custody in 2016 after New York police arrested him for using his daughter’s student transit card. That started a long immigration case.

In November 2022, a federal judge stopped the government from sending Skoro back to Kosovo because of the risk of torture and murder under the Convention Against Torture. The judge did not give him legal residency. 

Bhairavi Desai, head of Skoro’s taxi union, said she was “shocked” to learn the status of the “impressive, funny and kind” driver was not secure. “I thought that given the work that he did on the war on terror on behalf of the CIA, he would have already had permanent status here,” she told CBS News. “It just seems really brutal to have used him in this way and now to discard him.”

Lawyers Rene Kathawala and Amy Greer filed a habeas petition on August 4. They argue the 2022 protection means ICE must get a judge’s approval before deporting him, which the agency did not do. Legal concerns over ICE arrests are not new, as one person in New Jersey was not given the chance to show his ID before his arrest.

This month, ICE deported a group of Mexican nationals who had the same Convention Against Torture protection after the State Department got promises from Mexico that they would not be harmed. Those cases also started without a federal court filing, The New York Times reported. In another ICE-related development, the agency is seeking compensation from a lawyer accused of copying the same asylum case 118 times.

An amended petition filed August 17 said: “This is yet another case that concerns whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement (‘ICE’) can – without notice, reason, or process –  arbitrarily arrest and indefinitely detain a noncitizen who has been granted Withholding of Removal under the Convention Against Torture.” 

It added, “The answer to this question is resoundingly no. This holding has been confirmed by opinions across the country.” U.S. District Judge Robert Kirsch ordered the government to reply by Thursday. ICE confirmed it received a request for comment but gave no statement. The CIA and FBI also did not respond.