NEWSASYLUM-SEEKERS

Update, Nov. 12, 11:00 pm ET: JB not deported Saturday. JB's supporters, who accompanied him to the airport in a show of solidarity this evening, are reporting that the Dreamer has been spared deportation tonight. Voltaire thanks those who've signed and urge others to continue signing the petition, as JB remains at risk for deportation.

Everything seemed to be going right for JB Librojo. The hardworking student graduated from San Francisco State University with a pre-med degree and now dreams of becoming a dentist. He had been approved for a visa that would allow him to stay in the country he has called home for 16 years, works two dental jobs to pay for his family's home, and has a loving network of friends and family in California. Originally from the Philippines, his family had settled in the US on a granted asylum visa. And then came the deportation notice.

More than 7,900 people have now signed a petition expressing outrage that a young person who has done nothing wrong is caught up in a web of red tape that threatens to separate him from the only country he knows as home. Still, according to JB's friends, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have expressed no plans to cancel his scheduled deportation tomorrow. "See you Saturday," were the chilling last words JB heard from ICE this week.

JB just uploaded a video to YouTube, inviting his supporters to join him at the San Francisco airport tomorrow:

Just weeks after the Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) started a petition on Change.org that attracted 11,500 supporters, refugee Miguel Caceres has finally been released from prolonged detention. Victory!

On July 12, 2011, a U.S. immigration judge ruled that Miguel Caceres was a refugee and could stay in the United States. He had arrived in the country at the age of 12 fleeing from Honduras, where gang members and his own brother tortured, raped, and beat him because he is gay. It seemed that after so many difficult years, Miguel had finally found freedom.

Except that Immigration and Customs Enforcement refused to release him from detention and he was held in prolonged custody for 57 days. He suffered harassment, abuse, and threats because of his sexual orientation—with no sign that he’d be released—until NIJC convinced more than 11,500 people to sign a petition on Change.org calling on ICE to stop unjustly holding an abused refugee in detention. Now, Miguel has finally been freed from detention!

“I am very happy,” he said. “I didn’t think I was going to be able to get out [of detention]. There’s nothing like freedom. Thank you to everyone who supported me.” Miguel's petition called attention to the fact that ICE had no legal grounds to hold Miguel in detention.

Today, June 20th, is World Refugee Day, an international day of awareness that “honors the courage, strength and determination of women, men and children who are forced to flee their homeland under threat of persecution, conflict and violence, as well as the people who have dedicated their lives to helping them.” This year, the United Nations has chosen as its theme the message that "one refugee without hope is too many.”

Unfortunately, in the United States, we mark this day with the disturbing reality that many of the people who reach our shores seeking refuge from persecution, torture, and other abuses often end up with little hope: locked up in detention for years. Under U.S. law, asylum seekers are not allowed access to legal aid to represent their cases, and they are often placed in remote, for-profit detention centers, many times in areas where there are few pro-bono attorneys. The U.N. has indicated that detention of asylum seekers should be limited and avoided, yet it is common practice in the U.S.

In Austin, Texas, today’s day of awareness will be a day of protest during which a broad coalition of human rights groups will stand against the construction of a new detention center for refugees and other low-level immigration detainees in Karnes Co., Texas. Protesters will gather on the capitol steps at 7 p.m. and then march to the Travis County Jail.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has contracted the building and management of the new detention center to GEO Group, a large for-profit prison corporation at the center of numerous investigations after allegations of severe human rights abuses.

More than a year after a 7.0 magnitude rocked Haiti’s infrastructure, large parts of the island-nation remain in ruins. Worse, deadly diseases such as cholera have killed nearly 5,000 people.

Although the federal government suspended deportations of Haitians in the aftermath of the natural disaster, the New York Times reported in December that Immigration and Customs Enforcement planned to resume deportations of Haitian nationals in the U.S. by January 2011.

Here at Change.org, I reported on the outrageous plans to resume deportations to Haiti and started a petition asking the federal government to extend the temporary protected status (TPS) Haitian nationals received after the quake beyond July 2011. More than 300 people signed the petition—and today they have cause to celebrate.

Victory!

Yesterday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that TPS would be extended for qualified Haitians beginning on July 23, allowing them to stay in the U.S. through Jan. 22, 2013.

In 1991, the Chinese government forced Mei Fen Wong to get an intrauterine device (IUD) implanted in her uterus as a state-mandated form of population control. Wong found the device "unbearably" painful and, in accordance with what would seem like her individual rights, had it removed by a private doctor. But soon after, in a mandatory state-ordered pelvic exam, the government doctor found that Mei Fen Wong's IUD was missing.

Mei Fen Wong was detained for three days until she gave up her personal rights and allowed the reinsertion of an IUD. Traumatized and scared for her health, she fled to the United States and applied for asylum in 2000. Her claim was rejected by an immigration judge and then again, in 2008, by the Board of Immigration Appeals. But now, with wisdom somehow lacking in the BIA, the 2nd Court of Appeals has found this case compelling enough to have another look.

It hasn't been a month since the murder of Ugandan gay rights activist David Kato, and the United Kingdom finds itself in the spotlight again for trying to deport another LGBT asylum-seeker to death in Uganda.

Uganda is notorious for its criminalization of homosexuality with an infamous Kill-the-Gays bill in the works. David Kato, a gay rights activist, was brutally beaten to death last month after winning a lawsuit against the newspaper that outed him. The murder sent shock waves through much of the country. That same week, Britain was planning to deport Brenda Namigadde, a lesbian asylum-seeker hailing from Uganda, claiming that she could not prove her homosexuality. After receiving thousands of messages from concerned citizens all around the world, her deportation was stayed and case reopened. But now the United Kingdom is forcefully returning Jamal Ali Said to Uganda despite the fact he faces serious danger in his country of origin.

The United Kingdom Border Agency refuses to accept that Mr. Ali Said is a gay individual, despite his attendance to a gay support group for more than one year. The agency clearly needs to re-examine its criteria for adjudicating claims from LGBT individuals. It requires names of past lovers and actual published material denoting a person is gay, which is hard to produce and only threatens to put more people at risk. Oftentimes, due to clandestine affairs and threats, LGBT individuals are not open about their sexuality. That does not mean they are not gay and not at risk of persecution and certain death in their respective countries of origin.

Update 12/25/2010: Only a few days ago it looked like Hector Lopez, a former high school student body president, was going to spend Christmas in detention away from home and family. But thanks to over 1,830 letters sent by Change.org members, Hector made it home on Christmas Eve.

Hector Lopez, a former student body class president at Rex Putnam High School and a prospective student at Portland State University, was practically born in the United States: he was brought by his parents from Mexico to Portland, Oregon, when he was only six weeks old.

Unfortunately, Hector's parents were victims of an immigration scam, in which the person who promised to file papers for them didn't follow through. This activated an order of removal for Hector when he was nine that he knew nothing about. It was a surprise when he was taken to a detention center 11 years later and deported back to Mexico a week after.

As if that wasn't traumatic enough, once in Mexico he was attacked for his American mannerisms and found his life in danger. Recently, on November 17, Hector was allowed back into the U.S. through a request for asylum. As great as this sounds, Hector's struggle continues: he is still kept away from his home in Portland awaiting his hearing in a detention center in Arizona.

Sonya Yi, one of Hector's friends since elementary school, has been trying to help Hector since he was deported. Sonya started a Facebook group that got the attention of Lori Horton, one of Hector's classmates' mothers, who started the petition at Change.org that has gathered over 1,000 signatures asking for Hector's release from detention.

Change.org reported earlier this month on two different studies showing that the U.S. government has denied asylum to tens of thousands of refugees solely because they did not apply for protection within one year of their arrival. On Thursday, another study found that people who are denied asylum because of this one-year deadline often are deprived of a fair appeals process.

In the study, Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center, Penn State Law’s Center for Immigrant’s Rights, and Human Rights First examined more than 3,000 asylum decisions by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), the highest level of administrative appeal available to asylum seekers. More than 650 of those cases were denied because the applicants had missed the one-year deadline. In nearly half of those denials, the BIA provided no other reason for its decision.

Last week’s post from Lauren Markham described the many obstacles that prevent asylum seekers from applying within one year after they arrive in the United States. Some do not know that asylum protection is available, while others hesitate to embark on a legal process that requires them to retell their stories of persecution to government officials they do not yet trust.

Analyzing how the BIA handles the one-year deadline is important because most federal courts have found they do not have jurisdiction to hear asylum appeals that involve the deadline. This means that if an immigration judge rules that an asylum seeker is not eligible because she missed the deadline, and the BIA agrees, she usually has no further recourse. Despite the possibility that a wrong decision would return a refugee to a country where she may face persecution or death, the review found that the BIA misinterpreted federal regulations about exceptions to the one-year deadline and often provided no substantive analysis of why it denied cases.

Forty-four-year-old Irma Medrano fled El Salvador, where she lived a life of terror at the hands of an abusive husband, in 1995. Medrano was repeatedly beaten, strangled with a belt, and threatened with death. She was forced to watch as her husband submerged her children in corn, restrained them under piles of bricks, broke her daughter's nose, and ripped her nephew's earlobe. Earlier this year, word made it to her husband in El Salvador that Medrano might soon be deported. He is now on the hunt to find her. If Irma Medrano returns to El Salvador, she and her sister insist, she might never bee seen again.

Medrano reported her abuser to the Salvadoran police, who told her that there was nothing they could do to protect her because, after all, he was her husband. She was stuck with him. Medrano had no choice but to come to the United States where her husband could not track her down.

Though she testified early on to this extensive abuse, Medrano was not aware that she could apply for asylum until after an immigration judge ordered her to leave the U.S.; had she known, she would likely have qualified for protection as a member of a particular social group — in this case, a victim of domestic violence in El Salvador. Medrano's new attorneys have filed a motion with the Justice Department that would allow her to apply for asylum. The Justice Department has not yet ruled on the motion, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) denied her request to wait for the Justice Department's decision before deporting her.  As it now stands, without a swift decision or government intervention, Irma Medrano will be deported any day now to El Salvador where, as she told the Justice Department, she "will face certain torture or even death."

In 1998, Congress instituted an unfortunate provision to the U.S. asylum law: all applicants must apply for protection within one year of setting foot in the U.S.  Not surprisingly, this "one year bar" has blocked many deserving individuals from their entitled protection. According to two different studies released this month, an estimated 21,000 asylum-seekers would have been granted asylum in the United States if it weren't for this one year bar.

That means 21,000 student protesters, human rights activists, victims of domestic abuse, torture survivors, and other deeply persecuted individuals were turned away simply because they didn't apply under an arbitrary deadline.

The United States asylum system is intended to provide protection to those immigrants who have come to the U.S. and can prove a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. While the United States grants asylum to more individuals than anywhere else in the world, the one year bar seems designed to block asylum seekers from their legal rights — which ultimately puts them at dire risk of future harm upon returning home.

And what barriers are there to applying for asylum within the one year range? Applying for asylum is not as simple as one-two-three. It can be time-consuming, costly, and downright overwhelming — which makes the one year time limit unrealistic and prohibitive. I know a Nepali woman, for example, who spent four years and $30,000 in legal fees (on a housekeeper's salary) to file her asylum case and subsequent appeal that was ultimately granted. Many people are not aware of the possibility of protection under asylum laws until after they have already been in the U.S. for over a year (on a student visa, work visa, or as an undocumented person, for example).