A community call to help immigrants seeking safety

How can I help? That question reverberated in me as I saw immigrants suffering and worried that people I love would suffer too. I am an environmental lawyer. I knew nothing about immigration law. But, the pro bono coordinators at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP) explained that they provide mentoring and malpractice insurance.

My first asylum case for a man held in the Tacoma Detention Center was a steep learning curve. My client had fled persecution in the Republic of Georgia where he had been a social activist. When he was granted asylum, I was overjoyed. My next client was not so fortunate.

"The Taliban say, 'I hate you and I will kill you.' They tell the truth. Here they talk about human rights, but there aren't any." The young man speaking has spent 16 months in prison (aka a "detention center") without having committed any crime. He fled Afghanistan after the Taliban kidnapped him and beat him daily, because as a radio journalist and activist he was a voice for minorities and women.

The immigration judge acknowledged he had met the criteria for asylum, which would allow him to remain in the United States and later to apply for permanent residency. But she denied it, because by presidential proclamation, the current administration had closed the border with Mexico, making it impossible for my client to comply with the regulatory requirement that he get an interview before entering the U.S. After waiting six months in Mexico for an interview that now he could not get, he crossed the border and turned himself into border patrol. He has been in prison ever since.

The judge granted him withholding from removal, which means he cannot be returned to Afghanistan, but it allows ICE to send him somewhere else where he could be imprisoned and returned to Afghanistan. He waits, wondering each day if ICE will come and say they are sending him to Uganda? Eswatini? There is still some hope for his release, so I keep working.

Being in detention is getting harder. He cannot sleep with lights on 24/7 and constant noise from 100 other men. He lost two teeth due to denial of timely dental care. Though he is only 24 years old, his hair is receding. He jokes he will be bald by the time he leaves. In weekly brief phone calls with his elderly parents in Afghanistan his mother weeps and asks when he will be released, but he has no answer.

Attorneys are urgently needed to help immigrants, not only with asylum cases but also with getting bond to be released from detention. It does not matter what kind of law you practice or if you are retired, the pro bono coordinators at NWIRP provide great help and support.

I will provide more information about the current immigration situation and how people, especially attorneys, can help immigrants at a public presentation in the near future and during the Brown Briefly radio program on Voice of Vashon on August 4.

Laura Wishik is a retired attorney who has resided on Vashon 36 years.