[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 7 (Wednesday, January 28, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S313-S315]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    ENFORCING U.S. IMMIGRATION LAWS

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, we all agree that among the things we 
learned from the September 11 attacks was that we need to do a much 
better job of enforcing our immigration laws. While no system is 
foolproof, we should at least make it as difficult as possible to evade 
our border controls and enter this country illegally.
  In doing so we must also be sure that we protect the rights and 
dignity of innocent travelers, to ensure that those who have every 
right to come to this country are able to do so with a minimum of delay 
and difficulty. We must also ensure that we do not betray our historic 
commitment to asylum, a dedication to provide refuge to those who flee 
oppression.
  Since September 11, we have thwarted some illegal immigrants, 
although we do not know how many of them, if any, sought to come here 
to commit acts of terrorism. But we have also read about instances 
where innocent people were swept up by our border patrol agencies, and 
subjected to unnecessary and humiliating treatment.
  These abuses not only damage the individual, but they damage our 
image around the world. As a result, people who would otherwise travel 
to the United States, as tourists, students, or for business, are 
deciding against coming out of fear that because of their race, or 
ethnicity, or nationality, or just because of the chance of a mistake, 
they might be mistreated or imprisoned.
  Today I want to call attention to two cases. The first case involves 
Ms. Antje Croton, a German citizen married to an American school 
teacher from Brooklyn, whose ordeal was described in the January 21, 
2004 edition of the New York Times.
  Ms. Croton encountered a nightmarish immigration fiasco as she and 
her infant daughter tried to re-enter the United States after spending 
the holidays in Germany. The New York Times called Ms. Croton's ordeal 
``Kafkaesque.'' There is no better word for it.
  Concerned that her travel permit had expired in July, Ms. Croton 
visited a Department of Homeland Security, DHS, office in New York City 
before leaving the country for Germany on December 9, 2003. After 
talking to officials there, she was assured that her permit was valid 
through April 2004. Believing her documents were in order, Ms. Croton 
left for Germany.
  Upon her return, Ms. Croton was told by an immigration official at 
the airport in New York that her travel permit had expired, and that 
she could not enter the country. With her infant daughter, Ms. Croton 
was interrogated until 2 a.m. and told she was to be put on the next 
plane back to Germany, all without informing her husband, who was 
waiting in the terminal.
  At one point, Ms. Croton and her daughter were taken to a room where 
a dozen individuals, including some who were suspected of transporting 
drugs and illegal firearms, were being held. After several more hours 
of back and forth, immigration officials finally gave Ms. Croton the 
option of leaving the airport if she bought a return ticket that left 
for Germany within 30 days.
  Ms. Croton and her husband spent the next 30 days negotiating layers 
of byzantine immigration rules and regulations in an effort to resolve 
her case before she was forced to depart. Even with the help of elected 
officials and immigration lawyers, the couple was getting nowhere. It 
was only after an inquiry from a New York Times reporter that the DHS 
began to pay attention.
  The second case involves Sonam, a 30-year-old Buddhist nun whose 
plight was recounted in the January 27, 2004 edition of the Washington 
Post. Sonam, who goes by only one name, was detained at Dulles 
International Airport last August after arriving from Nepal.
  After her father was arrested and tortured, Sonam fled from her 
native Tibet, controlled by China, to Nepal 3 years ago. She reached 
Nepal by walking for 8 days across mountainous territory. She then fled 
Nepal last summer, after the government there began returning Tibetan 
refugees to China, where they face prison and torture.
  Sonam was granted asylum by a United States immigration judge last 
November, but the DHS immediately appealed the ruling and refused to 
release Sonam from custody during the pendency of the appeal. As a 
result, she may spend years in a local jail outside Richmond where she 
has been detained. In this jail, she is housed among common criminals 
and is unable to communicate with anyone because she does not know 
English.
  The DHS defends its punitive policies toward asylum seekers on the 
grounds that it is concerned that terrorists may manipulate the asylum 
process. It strains belief to imagine that the DHS believes that a nun 
from Tibet with no knowledge of English or history of violence, whom a 
U.S. Government official has found deserving of asylum, is a potential 
terrorist.
  Even Asa Hutchinson, the DHS Undersecretary for Border and 
Transportation Security, told the Post that ``[e]ven a well-balanced 
policy can get out of kilter on an individual case because someone has 
exercised poor judgment.'' It is clearly the case here that someone at 
DHS is exercising poor judgment, and Secretary Ridge or Undersecretary 
Hutchinson should do something to rectify this injustice.
  There is no question that securing our borders from international 
terrorists, criminals, and illegal immigrants is one of the most 
important responsibilities of the Federal Government. We are more aware 
of this today than ever before.
  But this does not give DHS a license to act in a bureaucratic and 
heavy-handed manner, which is precisely how it appears they behaved in 
these cases.
  Border security involves striking a balance. Instead of wasting time 
and resources scaring and harassing a German woman and her baby or a 
Tibetan nun, who pose no threat to the security of the United States, 
DHS should be focused on stopping real terrorists and criminals. 
Moreover, in the Croton case, an immigration official told Ms. Croton 
that her paperwork was in order before she left the United States.
  Thanks to the New York Times and others, the Croton case may be 
headed for a happy ending. But this is an instance where the victim 
spoke English,

[[Page S314]]

is married to an American, and is a citizen of a nation that is a close 
ally of the United States.
  What if this had involved someone who spoke little or no English? 
What if the person in question were not married to an American citizen? 
What if the media and elected officials had not been aware of it, and 
had not gotten involved? I suspect the individual would have been 
deported, even though their only offense was listening to the advice of 
an immigration official.
  Meanwhile, the outcome of the Sonam case remains unclear, and unless 
the DHS acts, she can expect to spend most if not all of 2004 behind 
bars.
  There are probably dozens, if not hundreds of other cases, of would-
be immigrants and asylum seekers that do not have happy endings that we 
do not know about. Even one case like this is too many. Immigrants are 
responsible for the diversity of cultures, ideas, and practices that 
make up our society. We have an important responsibility to help those 
attempting to come to this Nation legally.
  Equally important, we have an interest in treating immigrants fairly 
and with respect. Poor treatment of legal immigrants squanders goodwill 
that the United States spends billions of dollars each year--through 
foreign aid, international exchanges, and public diplomacy programs--to 
cultivate.
  To be sure, we want our DHS officials to do their jobs effectively. 
We have to make sure that people entering this Nation are doing so 
legally, and are not a threat to the United States. But, we also have 
to make sure that DHS officials act in a fair and professional manner.
  I hope that the DHS is reviewing what went wrong in these cases, and 
taking whatever steps are necessary to prevent it from happening again. 
I ask unanimous consent that the New York Times and Washington Post 
articles be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Jan. 21, 2004]

            Trip Home From Europe Becomes Kafkaesque Ordeal

                          (By Nina Bernstein)

       A German woman married to a Brooklyn schoolteacher had been 
     told that she had all her papers in order when she took a 
     quick trip to show off her infant daughter to her parents in 
     Germany.
       But her return home in late December turned surreal and 
     terrifying when Homeland Security officials at Kennedy 
     Airport rejected her travel documents, confiscated her 
     passport, then detained her and the 3-month-old overnight in 
     a room with shackled drug suspects. They let her go only 
     after ordering her to leave the country no later than 
     tomorrow.
       After a month of desperate efforts by her American husband, 
     their lawyers and legislators, late yesterday a spokeswoman 
     for the Homeland Security Department said that the woman, 
     Antje Croton, 36, would be granted a last-minute reprieve. 
     But Mrs. Croton said she had received no written 
     notification. ``I'm in a nightmare,'' she said as she packed 
     yesterday afternoon, having abandoned hope of straightening 
     out the problem. ``I feel like I'm in the wrong movie.''
       Her husband, Christopher Croton, said the couple was not 
     convinced their ordeal was over. ``The experience has been 
     like trying to open a door to a room that does not exist,'' 
     Mr. Croton said. ``That's the irony here. My German-born wife 
     has to come here to experience this wall of, just The 
     State.''
       He pointed out that other foreigners with fewer resources 
     have been caught in the same kind of bureaucratic confusion 
     ever since the Immigration and Naturalization Service was 
     absorbed by the Department of Homeland Security last year.
       Mrs. Croton has lived in Park Slope for five years, and her 
     application for a green card has been pending for nearly two. 
     When her sister urged her to visit Germany, she wanted to 
     take no chances. So in October, she said, she asked 
     immigration officials at 26 Federal Plaza about getting a new 
     travel permit.
       According to her account, an immigration official, C.E. 
     Herndandez, insisted that her old permit was still valid, 
     though it had a July expiration date, because it bore a stamp 
     saying ``April 2004.'' Reassured, Mrs. Croton departed on 
     Dec. 9. ``I did everything by the rules,'' Mrs. Croton said.
       But on Dec. 22, when she returned to Kennedy Airport at 9 
     p.m., exhausted after a 10-hour trip alone with her baby 
     daughter, Clara, front-line border security officers barred 
     her way. They said the immigration official had been wrong: 
     the July 2003 expiration, not the April 2004 stamp, applied, 
     and she could not enter the United States.
       They interrogated her until 2 a.m., she said, as she wept, 
     tried to nurse her baby and pleaded with officials to call 
     her husband, who was waiting without word in the terminal.
       Mrs. Croton, who has worked for an ad agency in Hamburg and 
     as a journalist in New York, and who recently started her own 
     Internet business as a handbag designer, said she was 
     astonished that the official questioning her had to struggle 
     to enter her replies in an archaic computer, hunting and 
     pecking and calling for help to save the document file.
       ``Then this man says, `We are going to put you on the next 
     plane going back home.' ''
       ``I said, `This is my home,' '' recalled Mrs. Croton, who 
     has lived in the same apartment with her husband since before 
     they were married in 2001.
       She was then taken from the airport's terminal 1 to 
     terminal 4, she said, to a fluorescent-lit room where a dozen 
     detainees included a man who had been carrying an illegal gun 
     and several suspected drug couriers in shackles.
       ``I couldn't even spell my name anymore,'' Mrs. Croton 
     said. ``Nobody who hasn't had a little infant and traveled on 
     a long-distance flight can understand. I said, `I need to lie 
     down. I'm shivering, I'm exhausted, I'm nursing.' '' But she 
     said an officer retorted: ``Stop crying. There were other 
     people here with kids, and it's not going to get you 
     anywhere.''
       The most humane response, Mrs. Croton added, came from the 
     low-level worker who had driven her from one terminal to the 
     other. Learning that the mother had no diapers left for her 
     baby, the driver returned with three toddler-sized disposable 
     diapers, the only ones she could find.
       In the morning, a supervisor told Mrs. Croton that she had 
     to board a plane to Germany, but she refused, fearing for her 
     health and the baby's. She was then offered another option: 
     to buy a ticket for a flight to Germany leaving within 30 
     days, with no guarantee she could ever return.
       The couple hoped to straighten out the mess before her 
     forced departure, but the red tape seemed impervious. Two 
     weeks ago, the couple went back to see Ms. Hernandez at 
     Federal Plaza, and she again told Mrs. Croton that her travel 
     document was still valid until April.
       When told what had happened at the airport, other officials 
     said that without Mrs. Croton's confiscated passport and 
     file, their hands were tied. They were at an impasse until an 
     inquiry by a reporter for The New York Times to Janet 
     Rapaport, a spokeswoman for the Border Security section of 
     Homeland Security.
       That resulted in a flurry of activity. Ms. Rapaport said 
     yesterday that a decision had been reached by Susan T. 
     Mitchell, director of New York field operations for Customs 
     Enforcement and Border Security, based on a review of Mrs. 
     Croton's file. Mrs. Croton would be allowed to stay and 
     pursue her green card application. ``I guess for humanitarian 
     reasons,'' Ms. Rapaport said.
       ``I want to believe it,'' Mrs. Croton said. ``But they tell 
     me I can stay, and then I stay, and then what if they tell me 
     I'm a real lawbreaker?''
                                  ____


                [From Washingtonpost.com, Jan. 27, 2004]

                  Granted Asylum, Nun Held in Va. Jail


                 tibetan entangled in post-9/11 caution

                             (By David Cho)

       Hopewell, VA.--Sonam always feared her devotion to Buddhism 
     would land her behind bars in her native China. As it turns 
     out, she is serving a long term in jail--not in East Asia but 
     in central Virginia.
       The 30-year-old Buddhist nun, who grew up in a Tibetan 
     village near the foot of Mount Everest, fled to the United 
     States in August after family members had been tortured and 
     friends jailed for their faith, she said. But when she 
     arrived at Dulles International Airport and requested asylum, 
     federal immigration officials detained her and placed her in 
     the local jail in this small city outside Richmond.
       Sonam, who is known by that one name, has been here ever 
     since except for a brief visit in November to a court room in 
     Arlington where a federal immigration judge granted her 
     asylum. But even as she was hugging her attorney in 
     celebration, the lawyer from the Department of Homeland 
     Security announced that she was appealing the case.
       Sonam was then shackled and returned to her cell, where she 
     waits for their next court date, which is likely to be in the 
     fall at the earliest, her attorney said.
       Sonam is among thousands of asylum seekers who have fled 
     persecution in their homelands only to be jailed in the 
     United States, a new report by the New York-based Lawyers 
     Committee for Human Rights shows.
       By law, the Department of Homeland Security detains all 
     asylum seekers who arrive without proper documents. But since 
     the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, federal immigration 
     officials have also been denying parole to those immigrants 
     and appealing rulings in their favor, a practice that can 
     keep them locked up for years, according to the report, which 
     monitored the department's activities for a year and details 
     scores of cases, including Sonam's.
       Homeland Security officials deny they are trying to keep 
     asylum seekers behind bars, although they acknowledge that 
     long incarcerations occur. They say they are reviewing their 
     practices in responses to the report and are tallying 
     statistics on how many asylum seekers have been detained, 
     refused parole or seen their cases appealed.
       ``Even a well-balanced policy can get out of kilter on an 
     individual case because someone

[[Page S315]]

     has exercised poor judgment,'' said Asa Hutchinson, the 
     Homeland Security Department's undersecretary for border and 
     transportation security.
       At the same time, he and others say their is concern that a 
     terrorist could slip into the country under the guise of an 
     asylum request.
       ``People who come here may have no legitimate [reason]. 
     They are here for economic reasons or for criminal reasons 
     and have been trained to assert asylum,'' Hutchinson said.
       ``That requires us to be careful and . . . sometimes it 
     makes people more skeptical of asylum cases than they should 
     be.''
       Last week, during an interview at the Riverside Regional 
     Jail, Sonam spoke of her journey to the United States that 
     began with a desperate, eight-day walk to Nepal across snow-
     capped mountains and ended with her first ride on an 
     airplane, which frightened her so much she couldn't look out 
     the window.
       Sonam Singeri, a Tibetan working for Radio Free Asia who 
     has befriended Sonam, was at the interview to translate. As 
     soon as Sonam walked into the visitors' room and saw Singeri, 
     she collapsed into her arms and sobbed uncontrollably.
       ``It's so lonely. It's so hard. Why is this happening?'' 
     she cried out, Singeri said.
       Sonam told a story of flight and fear. She said her father 
     has been jailed in Tibet and tortured with electric shock. 
     She described hiding from police patrols as she made her way 
     across the Himalaya Mountains to Nepal, where she lived for 
     three years.
       But even there, she said, she worried about her safety. In 
     May, the Nepalese government began to round up Tibetan 
     refugees and send them back to China, where they were sure to 
     face prison and torture, she said.
       Even after asylum seekers such as Sonam have convinced 
     immigration judges that they are bona fide and pose no 
     threat, Homeland Security lawyers continue to press appeals 
     in many cases, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights report 
     says.
       ``They are indefinitely detaining asylum seekers who have 
     already been granted relief, who present no risk, who have 
     often been tortured in their home countries,'' said Archi 
     Pyati, who works in the lawyers committee's asylum program.
       ``We are sending a message that in the United States . . . 
     we don't hope that asylum seekers find their way here because 
     if they do they will find themselves in a very difficult 
     situation and in prolonged detention.''
       Immigrants seeking asylum in this country must prove not 
     only their identities but also that they are in danger in 
     their native countries.
       Sonam's case was appealed because she did not have enough 
     documentation to back up her story, according to a brief 
     filed by Homeland Security attorney Deborah Todd. The fact 
     that Sonam lived in Nepal for three years indicated that she 
     could have safely stayed there and did not need to come to 
     the United States, Todd argued in her appeal.
       Asked to comment, a spokesman for Homeland Security said 
     the department does not talk about ongoing cases.
       Sonam said she had no way to get identity documents in 
     Nepal because the government does not recognize refugees from 
     China. She feared that she would be deported to China along 
     with other Tibetans who were being sent back at the time. So 
     she sought a way to get to the United States.
       Using the money she had made as a seamstress before she 
     joined her monastery in Nepal, Sonam booked a flight through 
     Calcutta to Dulles.
       After she was jailed in Virginia, her attorney, who has 
     taken the case pro bono, twice asked the Department of 
     Homeland Security to release her from detention, arguing that 
     Sonam poses no danger. But immigration officials denied both 
     requests without much explanation, according to Sonam's 
     attorney.
       The hardest part of Sonam's life these days is that she 
     cannot speak or understand the language of the inmates or 
     guards. (She is also illiterate in her native Tibetan 
     tongue.) She has not been able to have a conversation with 
     anyone since her hearing in November and wept as she 
     recounted her seemingly endless days of silence and isolation 
     in jail.
       ``I live in a prison but always in my mind, I hold onto a 
     picture of His Holiness [the Dalai Lama] in my heart,'' she 
     said. ``This prison has become my monastery.''
       An hour into the interview, a guard tapped the window of 
     the visitors' room. It was time to go.
       Sonam shed a few more tears. It might be months before her 
     next conversation. She hugged Singeri again and then followed 
     the guard back to her part of the jail where she does not 
     speak, cannot understand anyone and where she waits in her 
     prison within a prison.

                          ____________________