The Eloy Triangle: Part III -- A's Story.

A look inside an asylum hearing at the Eloy Detention Center

This week I’m sharing some thoughts springing from my visit on Tuesday to the ICE Eloy Detention Center to attend a refugee asylum hearing. Today is Part III

Click here for Part I – Follow the Money.

Click here for Part II — It’s Not Punishment?

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“Respire profondément”

“Tout va bien. Tu as gagné.”

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The abstract nakedness of being human.

That’s what Hannah Arendt, one of the 20th century’s most influential thinkers on totalitarianism, human rights, and the nature of evil, called being without a country to call home.

The abstract nakedness of being human.

When you have no citizenship or legal status.

When you have no family or friends to stand by you.

When you have no political protections and are at the mercy of powers far greater than yourself.

You are reduced to “the abstract nakedness of being human.”

It usually doesn’t end well.

“The world found nothing sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human,”

Arendt wrote about the enormous refugee crises after the first and second world wars.

History has proven that being human isn’t enough.

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R. came in late to the meeting we were supposed to be attending together. She came in late and had to leave early.

“I have so many cases to deal with,” she said breathlessly, the pain showing in her face.

The “cases” to which R. was referring were people being held at the ICE Detention Center in Eloy.

In the past days and weeks, orders had come down from the Department of Homeland Security to increase expedited removal, fast-track deportations … essentially deport as many people as possible from facilities like Eloy so that room can be made for more so the quota of “3,000 ICE arrests per day” set by Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem can be met.

R. was getting calls continually from panicked images of God behind the barbed wire and bars of the detention center … people who had just been told their final hearings were going to be within days if not hours … who didn’t know how to prepare or what was going to happen next.

“Are you a lawyer?” I later asked R.

“No,” she smiled. “Just a human being.”

The beautiful human beings detained at Eloy other ICE detention centers do not have the right to legal counsel and most never get it. In fact, most never get any human contact during their time incarcerated for the crime of fleeing for their lives.

R. volunteers her time with Eloy Visitation & Accompaniment. Through visitations, letters and phone calls, EVA exists to combat isolation and remind people in detention that they are not forgotten and that somebody cares.

To show that there is something deeply sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human.

She began to tell us stories.

Stories of people who had no legal counsel and no contact with family and friends.

Of people who had been through hell only to face a fresh hell standing alone before a U.S. government honing its blade of cruelty on their battered flesh.

The psalmist sings “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, because you are with me.”

There is something about accompaniment that makes us less afraid.

R. couldn’t offer much … but she could offer that.

“Could you take me?” I asked?

“Let me see,” she replied.

A day later she said she had gotten permission from A, a refugee who had fled political persecution in a small African nation, to have me attend their Individual Merits Hearing … the final hearing where a judge will rule on their request for asylum.

Tuesday, I met R. and another friend of hers and we drove the 50+ miles to Eloy, where after being screened by security and being buzzed through multiple steel doors, we were ushered into the back of a small hearing room.

The DHS prosecutor was seated at one table.

A was seated at another table.

A translator’s face filled a large screen to A’s right,.

We all stood as the judge entered.

R. had briefed us on the participants – but not on the details of A’s story.

The judge was a good draw … they actually were fair … in fact because the Trump administration is actively purging judges who approve too many applications for citizenship and asylum, R was worried that he either might be pressed into being less fair … or not be around much longer.

Click here to see how immigration judges have been fired in San Francisco for being deemed too likely to grant asylum.

The prosecutor was new …R didn’t know him. And she knew that all prosecutors were under pressure to be as tough as possible – everything they said during the hearing would be scrutinized.

They were the blade of the state that was being sharpened.

The judge acknowledged the presence of the three of us visiting.

A was not allowed even to turn around and see us and we could not speak. A had to trust the judge’s word that we were there.

After some preliminaries, the judge turned to A and said:

“When was the first time you experienced persecution in your home country.”

And through the translator, A began to tell their story.

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Nearly a decade ago, A had been involved in an anti-government protest in their home country. They were beaten by the military, including suffering a broken leg. They were carried to a hospital by fellow protesters where they stayed for five days.

The same day they were beaten, soldiers came to the house where their spouse and children were. The spouse was beaten and the family was threatened if A was to ever speak out against the government again.

When A was released from the hospital, the family went into hiding. For years, A did not dare to leave the home to work – they were supported by family and friends. A’s spouse’s brother was a military officer and they believe that spared them from being disappeared and killed.

And … the fear remained.

After several years, A relocated to a farm and began to work. One day, after A’s military officer brother-in-law had died they received an anonymous call:

“the clock is ticking on you now” is all the caller said.

Some time later, A was stopped on the side of the road by soldiers, threatened and beaten.

“There is nobody to protect you now” they said.

A. stumbled home. Decisions were made. The entire family couldn’t get out … but A had to. The rest of the family would have to find a new place to hide.

A friend of the family helped A get the papers needed to leave the country. At extreme risk, A was able to fly to Addis Ababa … and then to Panama. There, A was robbed of passport, money and phone … but was able to survive by borrowing a phone and having family wire money … and because they had a photocopy of their passport.

They made their way to Guatemala … and then found a coyote who smuggled a group of them in a van north through Mexico to the U.S. Border.

There the coyote brought in members of the Sinaloa Cartel or one of its cousins … a routine practice … and A and the rest of those fleeing were robbed of all their remaining money and possessions. Once again, A was able to conceal the photocopy of their passport.

The coyote them showed them how to get through the fence and cross the border.

A was very shortly picked up by border patrol agents .. and they had been at Eloy ever since.

“What do you fear will happen to you if you return to your home country?”

the judge asked.

As the translator’s voice faded away, A’s voice trembled and cracked as they muttered something barely audible.

As A held their head in their hands and their shoulders heaved with their sobs, the translator’s voice boomed through the speaker.

“I will be killed.”

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A’s story was not told uninterrupted like that. The judge interrupted several times with questions … testing A’s consistency and looking for key phrases or details that would trigger a legal response.

I remember at times wishing A had answered questions differently … made a case more clearly … and yet I could tell that what rubbed against me as a strategic imperfection was something truly beautiful … that I prayed wasn’t hopelessly naïve.

A was simply telling the truth.

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I sat in silence … mostly … during A’s testimony (which was peppered with questions by the judge) and during the cross-examination by the DHS prosecutor.

I say mostly because there were times I received a well-earned understanding glare with index finger to her lips from R in moments when my incredulity and horror threatened to burst out of me.

She well knew our removal from the courtroom would do nothing to help our friend.

Three things in particular nearly drove me to outburst – ranging from the broad to the specific

Trauma Uninformed

The Somali-British poet Warsan Shire writes:

“No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark … I want to go home, but home .. is the barrel of a gun … no one leaves home until home is a damp voice in your ear saying leave, run now.”

I have been blessed to be in the presence of many survivors of trauma as they shared their stories. I say blessed because while sharing the story is necessary for healing (or, in this case, for the hope of survival), it is always retraumatizing and thus is an act of incredible courage.

When we retell traumatic stories … we literally re-experience them in the moment. Our bodies and minds react as if it is happening again … right now.

And yet, the judge and prosecutor ask them questions as if they are people living in normal circumstances making normal decisions.

How can you be sure it was military people beating you?

You lived for years without being threatened … how come you still thought you weren’t safe?

Why did you not just go to the U.S. Embassy?

Each of these questions do have rational answers

They wore the shoes only military have.

I was in hiding and under the protection of my brother-in-law

Finally … and most honestly…

You simply do not understand what this life was like.

Of all the truths A spoke in that hearing, perhaps nothing was more profound than that.

Not just because U.S. embassies are notoriously hard to approach.

Not just because if they had tried to get asylum at the embassy and failed they would be marked for death and in the heart of the country with no way to escape.

But because if you understood the traumatized mind, body and spirit, you would understand that the part of the brain that plans, that is capable of complex thought, that does all the things that our brains do when we are not under imminent threat … literally do not have blood flowing to them and are vastly diminished in function.

Why did you leave?

No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.

The hearing process resembles an interrogation … which for many refugees was the precursor to torture.

The refugee sits alone.

They have no advocate or counsel.

They are asked questions by people who literally have power over life and death.

Every answer is scrutinized for inconsistencies.

There are not even tissues for them to dry their tears.

There is only fear that when they walk out of this room it will be to their death.

Weaponizing ignorance

When it came time for the DHS prosecutor to ask A questions, the first question took my breath away.

“You said you lived in xxxxx,” the prosecutor said. “Is that a town, a city, a rural district.”

I gasped.

I gasped because I knew the answer to that question.

I gasped because I knew and the prosecutor didn’t.

A spoke through the translator.

“It is the capital.”

“Holy fuck.”

I mouthed.

This human being was being asked to share the most vulnerable stories they had.

The prosecutor and the judge were asked to make a decision based largely on whether they found it credible that they would be in danger if they were sent back to their home country.

And the prosecutor didn’t even know the name of the capital of the country.

I have since learned that the volume of the cases are so great that at best the judge and the prosecutor have glanced at the latest state department briefings on the countries in question.

Which leads to the final thought.

They have a plan

Ignorance isn’t just one more random barrier to justice (or even humanity) it’s part of a concerted plan to deny justice and life itself to some of the most vulnerable people on the planet.

Since taking office in January, the Trump administration has ordered entire sections omitted from the State Department reports that prosecutors and judges in these cases use … sections on abuses affecting, women LGBTQ+ people, persons with disabilities, government corruption, freedom of assembly and other human rights abuses in general.

As Human Rights Watch notes, these changes “degrade and politicize” the primary rights assessment tool left to those making life-or-death decisions.

The government is willfully denying judges and prosecutors access to information that could only assist those applying for asylum.

But the sins are not only of omission.

When the judge asked the DHS prosecutor for their recommendation, predictably the prosecutor’s response was that asylum be denied.

What sent a chill up my spine was his first reason.

“Under INA § 212(a)(3)(B) (8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3)(B)), the respondent provided material financial support to a terrorist organization.”

Excuse me?

Remember the part of A’s story where they were shaken down at the border by the Sinaloa Cartel or one of its cousins?

When A was robbed?

Because the Sinaloa Cartel and its cousins have been designated as terrorist organizations, the prosecutor was arguing that A should be denied asylum because in being robbed by them they had “provided material financial support to a terrorist organization.”

Let that sink in.

The government’s argument is that someone who had testified that they had been beaten and tortured … and that they likely would be killed if they were returned to their home country should indeed be returned to that country …

because they had been robbed.

The prosecutor followed up with assertions from the latest, edited, state department documents essentially saying it was possible that things were no longer so bad in A’s home country.

That was the argument our government made to likely send someone to their death.

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I have been tempted to despair many times in the past decade.

And every time, hope rescues me.

Every time.

Hope consistently comes from the same source:

Courage and humanity.

R had told me the judge in this case was one of the good ones. One who despite threats to their own livelihood had consistently granted asylum in cases where it was warranted and necessary.

We sat silently and prayed as the judge began to speak.

He disposed of the first matter quickly and succinctly.

“A shakedown cannot be considered willingly giving material support to a terrorist organization.”

I’m not sure I have never been so relieved – and even surprised – to hear something so obvious stated so clearly.

The judge then carefully, methodically, went through each point where he attested to A’s credibility, and noted that it took only a 10% chance that the person faced persecution to grant asylum¹, then said.

“The application for asylum is GRANTED.”

As the translator finished saying those words there was silence.

And then A put their head in their hands and collapsed in sobs.

But my faith in humanity was not done being restored.

The judge then turned and asked the prosecutor if DHS was going to reserve or waive the right to appeal his decision. The prosecutor replied that he needed to receive instructions from his superiors … so the judge called a five-minute recess and retired to chambers, leaving the rest of us sitting in the courtroom.

As A continued to sob uncontrollably, the prosecutor got on his phone. After a few minutes he put it down and sighed.

Then the prosecutor leaned over to A and asked quietly:

“Parles-tu français?”

Do you speak French?

A nodded, still overcome with tears.

“Respire profondément,” he said.

Take deep breaths.

“Respire profondément”

Then he leaned over and met his gaze and said:

“Tout va bien. Tu as gagné.”

It’s OK … you have won.

R saw what had happened and immediately began to celebrate because she knew that it meant the government was going to waive the right to appeal.

“It’s over,” she said in jubilation. “He must have been told they aren’t going to appeal.”

“It’s over,” she said.

I wasn’t as quick as R … and I was overwhelmed by something else.

This prosecutor, who on the record had been about as evil an agent of the state as I could imagine. Who had made the argument that A should be denied asylum and sent back to a country where he could very well face death merely because he had been robbed.

This prosecutor might not have shown the courage on the record that the judge had shown in granting A asylum.

But in that moment, without his superiors looking, the prosecutor looked at A and met him not in their respective roles but in their common humanity.

For that one moment in that terrible room, bound by rules and threats designed to control through dehumanization … humanity could not be suppressed.

“Respire profondément”

“Tout va bien. Tu as gagné.”

Then he said in English.

“Breathe deeply.”

“It’s OK. You have won.”

In the midst of an ongoing and increasing great inhumanity … in one person’s act of courage and another’s act of grace, a truth was affirmed that is greater than Empire’s power to oppress and suppress.

There is something sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human.

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Tomorrow the final installment – What’s Next?

Names and identifying details have been omitted for reasons of protection.

1. In INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421 (1987), the U.S. Supreme Court explained that “well-founded fear” is a more generous standard than the higher “more likely than not” (i.e. >50%) standard used for withholding of removal.

The Court emphasized that even a 1 in 10 chance (10%) of persecution can satisfy the ‘well-founded fear’ requirement:

“There is simply no room in the United Nations’ definition for concluding that because an applicant only has a 10% chance of being shot, tortured, or otherwise persecuted, that he or she has no ‘well-founded fear’ of the event happening.”
— Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. at 440.