Asylum battle separates mother, son

Locked away in a detention center in Tacoma, Wash., Rosemary Okere, a Nigerian journalist, refuses to give up her and her son's bid for asylum in the United States.

On one side she faces death at the hands of her husband's killers if she is deported to Nigeria. But every day she spends behind bars--she's been held for nearly one-and-a-half years--separates her from her teenage son, who is living with relatives outside Tacoma. The cost of her prolonged absence is her son's deepening depression that led him to try to end his life last summer.

On the other side is Nigeria, a country her son doesn't remember and where her life fell apart. She fears the impact of uprooting him from his current home and moving back to Nigeria, a tumultuous and unfamiliar country.

It began, Okere said, with the death of her husband, Nwogu Okere, in Lagos, Nigeria's capital, May 15,1991, where he was writing columns on economics for The Daily Times and other papers. Ambushed by a car full of uniformed police, he was shot in the chest with his arms raised. His body was taken by the police who sped away in their car.

Rosemary Okere, who was with her husband and their driver at the scene, escaped uninjured. At 28 years old she filed a lawsuit against the government when she realized no actions would be taken against the officers who killed her husband. When she started getting death threats from men claiming to be her husband's killers, she went into hiding with her son for several years. She finally made it to the United States on a tourist visa in 1995 and applied for asylum.

But America's immigration judges are poorly equipped to evaluate information provided to them by asylum seekers--especially from a country like Nigeria where political conflicts rarely make news in the United States.

Tim Sparapani, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said, "One of the great challenges is to provide judges with much more up-to-date, detailed information about all the extraordinary number of conflicts around the world."

Okere's first asylum claim was rejected in 2002, on the grounds that there was no proof her husband's death was politically motivated. The same judge denied 85 percent of all asylum cases he reviewed from 2000 to 2005 according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research organization that compiles information on enforcement activities of the federal government.

Okere had testified that her husband had been detained and beaten by the police on three occasions. They demanded he give up his sources and stop writing articles critical of the government.

Chris Albin-Lackey, a Washington-based Nigerian researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the 1990s were a brutal period of military dictatorship in Nigeria. "Police were often ordered to target individuals," he said.

Even the U.S. State Department's 1992 Report on Human Rights in the chapter on Nigeria mentions Nwogu Okere's death as an example of how "many policemen guilty of extra-judicial killings go unpunished and unquestioned."

Okere filed an appeal to the rejection of her asylum claim but--as happens to many in her situation--she relied on an attorney who took her money but advised her she need not appear in person at a key hearing. Her petition was denied in absentia. When she filed a grievance against the attorney with the Washington State Bar Association--which ruled in her favor--he threatened to have her deported. Two weeks later, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement apprehended her for deportation and she's been held without bail ever since.

Okere could end her incarceration by rescinding her appeal and submitting herself and her son to deportation. But Okere is determined to press her asylum claim. She is waiting for another appeal that could bring the case to a different judge, a process that could take years.

Her son (name withheld at his mother's request) is a high school student who dreams of playing college basketball. His mother's absence is hardest at times like his basketball games, when he sees parents cheer his teammates on. For Okere, it's a struggle to be a good mother over the phone or from behind the visiting room's glass wall.

"I don't blame the judge" who denied the asylum petition, said Okere. "He doesn't understand what it's like in Nigeria." But she firmly believes she will be killed if she returns.

Since Nigeria transitioned from military to civilian rule in 1999, things have improved slightly, said Albin-Lackey. But, he added, "Nigeria is still a human rights disaster."

Earlier this year, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez sent letters to all immigration judges and members of the Board of Appeals, stating that he's "watched with concern the reports of immigration judges who fail to treat aliens appearing before them with appropriate respect and consideration and who fail to produce the quality of work that I expect from employees of the Department of Justice."