Asylum

What does it mean? How does the US treat asylees? Are they really insane?

Immigration is a hot topic right now. In fact, it has been for several years. Amidst calls for mass deportations, spreading fear of illegal immigration, continuous calls for people to “get in line” or “come the right way,” criticism of presidents in the past endorsing so-called “open borders” and the widely criticized child separation policy, it’s enough to make you want to bury your head in the sand.

Today I want to talk about a process of legal immigration that is very much misunderstood. Asylum. What does it mean to claim asylum? DJT seems to think it means that people from insane asylums are coming here and just being released into our country. (He has said this numerous times, and it is not based in reality even a tiny bit.)

First, it’s easy to confuse an asylum seeker with a refugee because they often are trying to come to our country for the same reasons: their home country is no longer a safe place for them to live, whether that be because of war or because of some kind of persecution. Usually with refugees, they apply for and receive authorization to enter our country before arriving at the borders of the US. You may have heard of refugee camps in other countries - these are places where refugees who can no longer return home because of war and violence live, sometimes for many years, waiting for approval to come to the US. It is very common for refugees to spend their entire childhood and adolescence in a refugee camp.

There are numerous organizations, both religious and secular that work to help refugees transition to life in the United States. Refugees are thoroughly vetted and then supported once they arrive to make sure they are able to contribute to society. Refugees and asylum seekers who are granted permission to stay in the United States are able to get social security cards, work legally, pay taxes, and sometimes qualify for services like Medicaid. (This may be where the misconception comes from that illegal immigrants are receiving benefits. They are not, but LEGAL immigrants sometimes can, before becoming citizens.)

Asylum is something a little different. Asylum seekers simply present themselves at the border of our country and request admittance based upon their fear of returning home. Despite what certain politicians and pundits have led many Americans to believe, the vast majority of people showing up at our Southern border are fleeing extremely dangerous situations in their home countries and have come to our borders to claim asylum. Which is LEGAL.

Another misconception about people seeking asylum is that they are simply released into this country, with no documentation, and then they go about doing whatever they please. Nothing could be further from the truth. Asylum seekers must prove to officials that they have a credible fear of returning to their home countries. Many do not succeed and are deported.

I recently picked up a book from the library called “Asylum” by Edafe Okporo, a firsthand account of navigating the US asylum system. I thought it was a very insightful read and I’d like to share all I learned with you.

Edafe grew up in Nigeria, a country where being LGBTQ is literally a death sentence. He was raised knowing almost nothing about what it meant to be gay, but he knew from a young age he was different from other boys. Edafe became a minister and earned a college degree, all the while trying to hide that he was gay. Eventually he was discovered and mobs came to attack him at his home. He was already living in the safest city in Nigeria for LGBTQ individuals, which really wasn’t saying much. So, in 2016, he boarded a plane for New York City and presented himself to officials there for asylum. He informed them that if he returned to Nigeria he would be killed because he is gay. (Keep in mind that at this point Edafe is throroughly traumatized, he has fled his home country and everything he knew because he is afraid for his life and knew if he stayed he would face horrific violence and certain death.)

What happened to Edafe is what happens to most asylum seekers. He was shackled and sent to a detention center, where he spent the next 5 and a half months waiting for his case to make it through the court system.

“How unjust this felt; I had come to this country seeking protection from danger, and there I was in chains…I was so ashamed that people would believe me to be a criminal.” p. 59-60

Many immigrants spend much longer in detention centers. These centers have recently made headlines again as the US has thrown European tourists and people with valid work visas into them, where they struggle to get out. The stories are horrifying, and it’s important that they are bringing to light what it is really like inside these detention centers, the way it has been for many years, under both Republican and Democratic presidents.

A detention center is basically jail. Actually, it’s sometimes worse than jail. Edafe had a fellow inmate at the detention center who had served jail time before coming to detention and he said he had liked real jail better. At least there they got to go outside. At the detention center Edafe was sent to in New Jersey, inmates never got to go outside, and the only view to the outside world they had was via a small skylight in the ceiling.

Edafe’s clothing and possessions were taken, and he was given a prison jumpsuit to wear and assigned a bed. Guards called all inmates by their bed number, not their names. The beds were hard slabs of concrete with a thin mattress on top. There was not much to do to pass the time other than watch television, play video games, or exercise in the gym. Edafe begins to feel that everything about the detention center is designed to be a deterrent. Despite this, he never meets anyone who wants to return to their home country.

“Like most prisons, our detention center was run by a private company, profiting off the jailing of immigrants. These facilities are traded on the stock market, and those who run them do whatever they can to cut costs and improve efficiencies to be more profitable…. Health care…was very poor. According to reports from the Washington Post and CNN, the number one cause of death in U.S. immigration facilities is lack of access to quality health care services.” pg 80-81

After a week, Edafe is given an interview to determine whether he can move on to meet with a judge to decide his case or whether he will immediately be sent home. The interview is intense and probing. Not for the first time, Edafe must relive all the trauma he has already been through as he tells his story to a stranger who is more interested in catching Edafe in a lie than he is in compassion. At one point, Edafe shares that he had a life and a career in Nigeria. He was doing work that he loved. If he could have stayed in Nigeria, he would have. He only came (as most asylum seekers do) because life in his country was no longer possible for him.

US immigration policy says that after 7 days of detainment, an asylum seeker is supposed to meet with an officer to determine the credibility of their claim and then they are eligible for parole. This means they would be allowed to live outside the detention center and continue to fight their case from outside. However, this is not what happens to Edafe. The privately run prison system earns more money the more people who remain in detention centers, so the incentive to grant parole is very low. (The book points out that alternatives to detention such as parole, bonds, and location monitors are more ethical and they are also cheaper. American taxpayers spend $201 per day per person in our detention centers. The only people benefiting from this are the wealthy owners of these prisons.) Edafe was deemed a “flight risk” for no reason that he was able to find out, and was forced to remain in the detention center.

“We cannot be a beacon of hope and yet dehumanize people seeking protection at the same time; there should be an oversight of the detention centers where migrants are kept, a separate watchdog or community set up to inspect the center from time to time. Though in general, I feel that the United States should stop using private prisons to hold up immigrants altogether.” pg. 82

Edafe also shares some insight into what it is like specifically to be an LGBTQ asylee, as they often face even more challenges than other asylum seekers. For example, it’s common for a Queer asylum seeker to have no support or contact from family back home, because they often come from countries where their identity is so oppressed that they have also been completely disowned and rejected by family. That being said, it is only within the last 30 years that the United States has accepted queer asylum seekers into the country. For many decades we simply did not want queer people to come here, and then when we became more accepting of LGBTQ individuals, our policy did not often consider being a part of this group to be a sufficient reason to be seeking asylum.

Also, the anti-LGBTQ laws and policies in places like Nigeria that result in Queer people from those countries coming to the US to seek asylum can be directly traced to American religious groups who have actively funded and encouraged these laws and policies. So many of the evangelicals (and other religious people) who are furious about the surge of immigrants at our borders are directly contributing to the reason some of those immigrants are seeking asylum.

Edafe’s identity as a gay man made life in the detention center more difficult for him, as he was not treated well by other inmates. He also recounts meeting a trans woman named Jenny, who had fled her country because of her identity, and how the detention center continued to be an extremely unsafe environment for her.

Finally, after 5 and a half months in the detention center and after numerous meetings with lawyers and judges, Edafe is granted his claim to asylum. (Edafe was lucky. Due to significant backlogs in immigration hearings, many immigrants wait significantly longer. The American Immigration Council says “Individuals with an immigration court case who were ultimately granted relief—such as asylum—in FY 2023 had waited more than 1,364 days on average for that outcome.” )

But guess what happens when Edafe is finally released from detention? They hand him his belongings and clothes and just…open the door and say “Good luck!”

“Being released in forty-degree weather with no sense of direction made the point incredibly clear: the American incarceration system was efficient in jailing, but not in preparation for an inevitable release….I found myself suddenly ashamed that my new home country would treat immigrants this way.” pg 98

Edafe is finally able to connect with a nonprofit group that works to help recently released detainees find a job and a place to live, but he relies on the kindness of strangers for a long time. Remember, when he is initially released he has no money, no way to get a job, nowhere to live. And lucky for him he speaks English. Many people in his situation do not. Is it any wonder that new immigrants in this situation might resort to crime out of desperation?

Edafe eventually does get on his feet and ends up working to help detainees like himself. He says “asylum seekers were afraid of being released, because they would have nowhere to live. Better to stay locked up with a concrete slab to sleep on and be fed daily than to be homeless.” (pg 121)

So let’s recap - when someone comes to this country to claim asylum (which is LEGAL), they are almost always fleeing an extremely traumatic and dangerous situation in their home country. They are met in America with handcuffs and jail that’s worse than actual jail, with no idea how long they will have to stay incarcerated, or whether they will get to stay in the country. If they do make it through the process and are granted the ability to stay, we throw them out on the street and give them no support or even direction. It’s a completely inhumane way to treat people who are already significantly traumatized by the situation they fled.

All the while, people are profiting off of these detention centers, and the government (especially under DJT, both times) has made it both more lucrative to keep more people locked up for longer, but also much more difficult to successfully navigate the system and achieve legal status.

“Imagine all we could do just by diverting the money going to maintain the private prisons and centers detaining refugees into actually helping people, arming them with information and resources.” pg 137

The book was full of so much I didn’t know before. It’s a quick read, only about 200 pages, and I highly recommend reading it to learn more. I hope that even this quick summary has given you something new to think about, and knowledge that you didn’t have before. I myself had absolutely no idea how the asylum system really worked, I just knew that presenting yourself for asylum was legal. But I didn’t know what happened after that. I leave you with a few more of Edafe’s words:

“Holding strong opinions on a process you have never experienced is the epitome of ignorance… Many have been quick to pass judgment about who has fled for America, without thinking much about why and from where they fled. I’ve always believed that in America, we aren’t meant to judge people for who they are when they arrived, but for who they can become by living here.

America promises liberty and justice for all, but we must ask ourselves: What is the America we dream of for ourselves - and what good comes from preventing others from accessing that freedom?” pg 135