KANSAS CITY, Mo. >> A large Kansas City law firm is offering free legal help to a Kansas chemist facing deportation.

The Polsinelli law firm said this week it will work with immigration lawyer Rekha Sharma-Crawford to secure the release of Syed Ahmed Jamal, who was arrested in January and nearly deported after living in Kansas more than 30 years. He lived with his wife and three children in Lawrence.

Jamal remains jailed in Platte County, Missouri. He was returned there nearly a month ago after attorneys secured a court order to remove him from a plane in Hawaii that was flying him back to Bangladesh.

An attorney at Polsinelli’s, Alan Anderson, is Jamal’s neighbor.

Jamal’s case is being reviewed by the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals and federal courts in Washington, D.C.