He spied for the U.S. in the war on terror. Now ICE wants to deport him.

A Kosovo Cab Driver Who Spied for America Now Faces Deportation

Wertynews.com – Blerim Skoro, a 55-year-old Staten Island cab driver and father of three, was pulled from outside a New Jersey immigration office earlier this month while attempting to renew his paperwork. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took him into custody, and he now sits at the Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey, awaiting a decision that could send him back to Kosovo.

His attorneys have petitioned federal court to block the removal, arguing that Skoro was assured of residency status after years of service described as work for the CIA. The Trump administration, however, is pressing to deport him.

“I never thought they were going to betray me like this,” Skoro told CBS News in a phone interview from the detention center. “Please, if I die, I should die in this country so my kids can bury me.”

From Drug Convict to Confidential Informant

FBI documents trace Skoro’s entanglement with U.S. intelligence back to 2000, when he was jailed for drug trafficking. His family had fled the Kosovo conflict of the 1990s, and he was struggling to support his children and refugee parents. He had been caught moving heroin overseas on behalf of an Albanian criminal gang.

Raised Muslim, Skoro found himself in a Manhattan prison alongside a cluster of Islamic radicals. FBI files identifying him as a confidential informant indicate that after the September 11 attacks, the CIA reached out to exploit those prison connections.

Years Inside Federal Prison Feeding Intelligence

Between 2002 and 2006, while incarcerated at FCI Allenwood, a federal prison in Pennsylvania, Skoro says he supplied the FBI with intelligence on several terrorists. Among them: Faysal Galab of the Lackawanna Six, whom federal agents characterized as America’s first homegrown terrorist sleeper cell; Randall “Ismail” Royer of the Virginia jihad network, convicted of organizing violence against U.S. troops deployed overseas; and Hezbollah member Junuz Fuaz.

Heavily redacted FBI records from 2004, obtained by CBS News, name Skoro as an informant in an investigation aimed at Osama bin Laden. At various points he provided what the files describe as “actionable” and “reliable” information, including details of a “Syrian training camp.”

Infiltrating al Qaeda from the Balkans

Skoro expected his cooperation would earn a reduced sentence. Instead, he says, he was deported to Kosovo in 2007 and instructed by the CIA to work undercover inside al Qaeda from the Balkans. He did not return to the United States until 2014, according to a prior legal declaration filed in his immigration case.

He claims he operated inside the terrorist organization from 2007 through 2009, traveling to an ISIS camp in Syria and working across Lebanon, Jordan, Pakistan, and Egypt in addition to his home country. Photographs and video he captured during that period show him in what appear to be Middle Eastern settings alongside known terrorists. The footage was featured in a 2024 documentary titled “The Accidental Spy” and in an episode of The Shawn Ryan Show on YouTube last year.

The Kaziu Arrest and the Uranium Shipments

Skoro appears to have played a direct role in the capture of Brooklyn-based terrorist Betim Kaziu, who received a 27-year prison sentence after attempting to purchase weapons for the Somali group al Shabaab to target U.S. troops stationed abroad. In a December 2020 declaration, Skoro wrote that he secretly phoned his CIA handler to relay his location while hosting Kaziu at his Kosovo apartment, leading to the terrorist’s arrest in July 2009 with a rifle, ammunition, and grenades in hand.

Skoro shared emails with CBS News between himself and a man he identifies as his CIA handler, “Chris,” dated September 24, 2009. They read:

“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 intercept shipments of uranium bound for Kosovo, averting what he describes as a possible “dirty bomb” plot. Beginning in April 2015, after his return to the United States, he says he offered additional intelligence to the FBI and the New York Police Department following contact from an ISIS recruiter.

A Decade of Quiet Life, Now in Question

In 2022, Skoro was granted a deferral of removal, a ruling his lawyers attribute in part to his role in securing arrests of al Qaeda, al Shabaab, and Hezbollah members. The decision acknowledged the danger he would face if sent back — specifically, the risk of capture and torture by those who want him dead.

His attorney, Joshua Dratel, told CBS News that for the past decade his client has led a “completely law-abiding, productive life with his family after a harrowing experience that he performed for the United States.” Now, with an American wife and children, Skoro fears the government he says he put his life on the line for is preparing to hand him back to Kosovo — and to the people who have been looking for him.