Week Four - Now We Wait
This week, we entered limbo.
During my fourth week at GAIN, five applications — both for asylum and visas for victims of violence — were completed and sent off to their respective immigration offices. These applications easily hold over 200 pages. They include the survivor’s personal statement, detailing their persecution or the violence they’ve suffered, or often both. There's a legal brief and countless shreds of evidence backing up the violence and proof of the applicant’s life back home and now in the U.S. For asylum applications, there’s country background reports and dozens of articles to highlight the country’s conditions.
Each application told a powerful story but Evelyn’s really touched me. Like the boy from my post last week, she is also young and thrown into a completely different world. Evelyn is a student activist from Nicaragua, targeted by the Sandinista government’s “Cleaning Operation” — the government’s targeted attacks and arbitrary imprisonment of those who have, or appear to be, against the President. Evelyn’s father has been in the El Chipote prison for over a year. His crime: defending protestors during negotiations with the government. The prison he’s in makes constant headlines for its torture practices.
Despite exploring possibly every legal avenue for her father and even receiving the aid of various human rights groups, a judge refused to release her father. In actuality, a judge did grant the release but that judge was then essentially fired and the decision was tried again before a new judge.
Evelyn’s crime: she spoke out. Her desperate media interview to garner attention for her father only made her the center of attention. She was followed and assaulted by Sandinista followers. She was blacklisted and labeled a terrorist, just like her father. Since leaving, her family’s house has been burned down. Still, her mother refuses to leave, staying in order to travel hours once a month to deliver a food package to the prison her husband is in.
Now, 21-years-old, Evelyn is in the U.S., unable to work, continue her education and waiting out a decision on her life, all alone. Her story though isn’t just touched by tragedy. It’s marked by unbelievably inspiring resilience and strength. Within her first week in the U.S. she contacted GAIN ready to make her case. She arrived in the U.S. through a program to learn English, but she has learned much more. She has immersed herself so deeply into learning about the immigration process that her self-taught legal knowledge surprises even the attorneys.
Thankfully, she came to us right away as asylum must be requested within one year of arriving in the U.S. Thankfully, it’s an affirmative asylum application, meaning she isn’t in deportation proceedings (which would make it a defensive application). Evelyn’s application is on the way. All 14 pages of instructions were read. All 12 in-depth questions have been answered.
So, now we wait.
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*Names and details have been changed for confidentiality purposes.