He came here from Kalmykia. If you have never heard of it, Kalmykia is a republic that was once part of the Soviet Union. I had never heard of it until we assisted him with his asylum case.
He is a journalist and a person of great strength, integrity and courage who stood up against governmental oppression in his home country. Under threat of imprisonment and perhaps even death, he was forced to flee his country, placing his pregnant wife and their children into hiding.
He came to the U.S. and immediately requested asylum with immigration authorities. The rest of his story is below the fold.
He was immediately handcuffed and placed into a detention center in Pearsall, Texas, which is in a very rural area about 70 miles outside of San Antonio. None of the guards or the other inmates in this facility spoke his language. They held him there for several months.
During the time he was held in detention, he learned an amazing amount of English.
On the day we finally got to present his asylum case to an immigration judge, he won his case. He was thrilled. All of us were so excited.
The governmental attorneys reserved a right to appeal, so right there, in the immigration court where he had just been granted asylum, he was shackled and handcuffed and lead back to detention.
He did not under stand why. He did not understand being further humiliated even after winning his asylum case.
A few days later, the government dropped their right to appeal. The immigrant detention center released him. They did not call his attorney at our office. They did not provide him with anything other than his detainee identification card and the clothes on his back. They simply left him by the road in front of the detention center, several miles from the small town of Pearsall.
He was lucky. A female police officer from the little town saw him and gave him a ride to a Western Union office so that he could contact a cousin, who sent him a small amount of money.
He used that money to contact us, so that we could help arrange transportation and shelter for him. He also used it to buy flowers for the police officer who had helped him and pizza for her entire office. What a terrible, horrible, threat to national security these immigrants are.
He is now doing well in Austin and working to bring his family here.
I tell you this story because not all of the abuses of justice we are committing in the name of “immigration enforcement” are as blatant and headline grabbing as ignoring a man’s medical needs until his penis has to be removed or locking up little children.
We have to ask ourselves, “Why, when people flee persecution in their home county and ask us for asylum are we immediately persecuting them here”? What national interest was served by treating this man who had committed no crime other than asking for our help as if he was a criminal? If we fear asylum seekers may not go through with their cases and simply disappear, are there not more humane ways to keep track of them than locking them up in prisons? Under what authority are we so blatantly ignoring basic human rights?
Why does the Bush administration love so much detaining and mistreating people?
P.S. We do have his permission to tell his story anonymously.