Asylum and Its Discontents in the United States
Last week, two new clients hired me. Each told me a story that ranks among the worst I’ve heard since I’ve been practicing asylum law. The first was an Iraqi grandmother. Her son worked for an international NGO and the family had received threats because of the son’s work. One day, armed militiamen pulled the … Read more
In the wake of revelations that two Iraqi refugees turned out to be former insurgents, the U.S. government is re-checking more than 58,000 Iraqi refugees against newly available data bases. The Los Angeles Times reports: The investigation was given added urgency after U.S. intelligence agencies warned that Al Qaeda leaders in Iraq and Yemen had … Read more
Last week, two Iraqi men were arrested in Kentucky and charged with (among other things) “conspiring to kill U.S. nationals abroad, conspiring to use explosives against U.S. nationals abroad, distributing information on the manufacture and use of IEDs, attempting to provide material support to terrorists and to al-Qaida in Iraq, and conspiring to transfer, possess and export … Read more
Followers of the Mandaean religion have lived in Iraq for well over 1,000 years. However, since the U.S. invasion in 2003, Mandaeans have faced all sorts of persecution from their fellow Iraqis, including murder, kidnapping, rape, confiscation of property and forced conversion. Their numbers have dropped from about 60,000 in the 1990’s to less than 5,000 … Read more