Christian grandson of Islamic terror group founder finds freedom in New York

The grandson of a founding member of a terrorist organization ran away from home as a teenager but after he learned that he would be deported from Canada where he was staying, he fled to New York where he is now living without fear.  

"I decided the best course of action was to flee home and come to the U.S. rather than be deported and sent to my death," John Calvin, who changed his name in order to protect his identity, told CNN Money.

Now in his mid-twenties, Calvin is the grandson of Said Bilal, one of the founding members of the Palestinian-Sunni Islamic resistance movement Hamas. His uncles have reportedly been linked to some suicide bombings.

"Islam [and] Hamas were the two things that my family revolved around," Calvin told CNN Money in an interview last year. "It was not part of my family's identity. It was the identity we had."

He learned at an early age that he liked males and had been fascinated with the novel "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown, after which he started exploring Christianity. At 14, he fled to Israel but was detained for crossing the border illegally. He said that a man from his hometown assaulted him sexually, but the Israeli prison guards were compassionate.

"That was the moment when I started breaking off from my beliefs," he said.

Upon his return home, his family learned of his intention to convert to Christianity, and he said his father, Jehad Salameh, intended to do an "honor killing," meaning he was to be put to death. He managed to flee to Canada where he got a student visa. He lived in Edmonton and there, he came out of the closet and admitted to being gay. He also became an active Christian.

He applied for refugee status in 2011, but his application was denied in 2015. The Canadian government reasoned that he was a de factor member of the terrorist organization, having been born into it, and he was already old enough at 14 to understand his family's wrongdoings.

In an interview, Calvin's father claimed that his son was sick and that he would take him to a doctor should he return to the West Bank. He denied having planned to kill his son as "Islam never imposes punishment on a mentally ill person."

However, in another interview, he said: "Our family is no less dignified than Saddam Hussein's family. His fate may not be different than that traitor general Hussein Kamel. What he did is offensive to honor and to religion, and the family has the right to retaliate against him."

Calvin fled to the United States before his deportation on Nov. 4 and was detained for almost seven months. The U.S. immigration judge dismissed Calvin's asylum application but, under the U.N. Convention Against Torture, he was granted deferred removal. The judge used CNN Money's interview of Calvin's father as evidence that he could be in danger if sent back to his country.

"He does believe, evidently, that I will be under threat of torture and death, and thus I should be granted protection under the convention against torture," Calvin said.

Calvin is not eligible to become a permanent resident of the U.S. He can, however, get a work permit every year. This would let him have a social security number.

"You can't ignore your moral responsibility toward refugees," he said. "At the same time, we can't just open a floodgate to anyone who wants to come. The vetting system [is] working well at the moment."