"I fought and I won. And I'm free..."

Nothing simultaneously brightens your day and makes you think about the influence your country's legal system has on people than opening your home last-minute to someone who was released from immigration detention earlier in the day.

After months of thoughtful conversations about what community means to us and deciding we want our two spare bedrooms to be available to give hospitality, the Tucson Young Adult Volunteer house has hosted friends, family, and significant others. But we also made the decision to be open to hosting people fighting an immigration case or getting bonded out of immigration detention who need a place to stay temporarily, and tonight we were called upon to provide such hospitality.

I will refrain from using his name to protect his identity. We do not know many of the details yet, but in his home country of Brazil, he was persecuted for identifying as a gay man. He fled for fear of threats against his life and made it to the US-Mexico border, where he crossed the border and was caught about fifteen minutes afterwards. He sounded excited about it -- "I wanted them to catch me," he added when I perhaps looked surprised. "I wanted to fight my case." And then he was put in a detention facility in Florence, Arizona for six months to fight his asylum case.

My question is, isn't there another option to provide people a place to stay while they're undergoing the tough-enough battle to prove that the discrimination, persecution, and violence they experienced meets standards for refugee status? An option other than imprisonment for an undetermined length of time? I'll let you sit with that question too. I don't have a good answer for you (at least yet...).

He was released on bond today with support from the Rainbow Defense Fund, and from the moment Raul Alcaraz Ochoa (community organizer for the Rainbow Defense Fund and Southside Worker Center) brought him to our doorstep, he just kept saying, "I just can't believe it. I won. I fought and I won. And I'm free..."

The United States was his dream country, he said. "It's just such a beautiful country, and people from the United States are a beautiful people. Everywhere in the world I went, I always saw a person from the U.S. trying to help others." As someone who can be rather critical of the country I have grown up in and continue to live in, especially as I have seen how much damage representatives of our government and our country can do around the world, his perspective was refreshing. Thousands of people seek opportunities in the U.S. every single day. Some seek educational or economic opportunities. Some family reunification. Some are escaping violence or threat of violence and have to prove reasonable fear that they would be in serious danger if they were to return to their home country. Important note: the concept of "economic refugee" is not recognized by refugee law, which means you cannot be granted asylum for fleeing even a life-or-death economic situation. Less than ten percent of asylum cases from Mexico are granted precisely for this reason.

In our new friend's case, he had to prove to a judge that because he is a gay man, his life would be in danger if he returned back to Brazil. And here he is, in his dream country. Finally free and in disbelief. He could barely contain himself, and he would slip in and out of regular conversation in a mix of Spanish and Portuguese and overwhelming gratefulness to be out of detention and in this space of hospitality. And I am grateful as well that my house has chosen to be such a space so that we may learn from and be inspired by his light and his perspective, and maybe we will even learn a little more Portuguese!

Boa noite :-)
Kathryn


P.S. If you'd like to do your reading on seeking asylum, here's one helpful article: Asylum Seekers At US, Mexico Border Double. And here's information for the Florence Project, which provides free legal services to people in immigration detention. They do amazing work, and their staff happens to include one of our housemates - Steph Quintana - who was a YAV last year!