causes & news

Two years ago, an Afghan Army Captain fled to the United States after weeks of hiding in Afghanistan. Taliban gunmen had stormed his home, later beating his father so brutally that he was unable to walk for weeks. The Army Captain was certain that the Taliban would torture and eventually kill him, knowing that many like him had met the same fate. His only crime? He came to the United States to learn English at a military school… and became an American infidel in the eyes of the Taliban.

So began an over two year fight to save his life. I represented E (his name has been abbreviated to protect his privacy) throughout a legal battle that spanned three courts, thousands of hours of donated legal services and years of E suffering in detention.  You see, in the United States, asylum seekers who enter with invalid travel documents are immediately placed into detention. In most of these cases, “detention” means that asylum seekers are locked up in jails, shackled during any periods of travel and forced to wear prison uniforms while living among a population of convicted criminals.

As a direct result of this “detention,” E’s mental and physical health quickly began to decline. And today, even though he is a free man, E continues to suffer from chest pain, difficulty sleeping and numbness in his hands from handcuffs were tightened too hard around his wrists for hours.

Unfortunately, E’s story is not unique. Well over 48,000 asylum seekers have been detained in U.S. jails and immigration detention centers from 2003 to 2009. As a result of detention conditions, their already fragile health often rapidly deteriorates:

A 2003 study of 70 detained asylum seekers by Physicians for Human Rights and the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture found that 86 percent [of detained asylum seekers] suffered significant depression, and half suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

In 2005, a bipartisan U.S. Government commission found that it was not appropriate for the United States to detain asylum seekers in prison-like conditions. Despite this and increasing media attention, little has changed; earlier this month, the NY Times reported that conditions remain much the same:

Though detention in America holds few of the horrors many asylum seekers experienced in their home countries, it has its own torments; detainees can be placed in solitary confinement, and are often prevented from communicating with relatives by lack of access to phones or by the high costs of jail phone service.

As conditions in Afghanistan and other countries continue to deteriorate, an increasing number of asylum seekers are likely to flee to the United States for safe harbor. Contact your local Senator or Representative today and demand better treatment for these scared souls. Surely, they deserve more than prison after the plight they have mercilessly been forced to endure in their native countries.

Read more: abuse, torture, prison, jail, detention, immigration, asylum, human rights, persecution