Immigration 2004 - Cover Story: Insane asylum

In immigration court in Atlanta, where every year thousands ofundocumented aliens learn whether they will be deported, there is nobailiff to announce the arrival of a judge. And so for the last 15minutes on this Wednesday in January, all eyes have been focused on thedoor that leads to the judge’s chambers. The only sound in thiswindowless room with the drop ceiling and dingy blue walls is theventilation whirring quietly above.

On today’s docket is just one case — the matter of 41-year-old KhaledDarzi and his family, who have lived in the United States for almostseven years. In 1997, they fled their native Iran, where Khaled hadbecome a marked man. The Darzis are Kurds, and for years, as Khaledtells it, he had helped Kurdish rebels in their struggles againstIran’s Islamic authorities. He had seen friends killed and his familypharmacy confiscated. He had been blackmailed, shot at and imprisoned.

Since coming to the United States, Khaled’s family has grown. When theyarrived, he and his wife, Anya, had two children; they now have four.Today, Khaled works as an electrician and Anya sells perfume at adepartment store. They make monthly mortgage and car payments, but theycan’t afford health insurance. Their oldest daughter just startedcollege. They live on a quiet street outside of Marietta with leafytrees and shiny Hondas in the driveways. They are, in essence,Americans in everything but name.

For seven years, the Darzis and the U.S. government have been engagedin an odd dance, with the Darzis trying to convince the government thatthey should be allowed to forever enjoy the protections and privilegesof life here, and the government putting up steady resistance. Overtime, that resistance has stiffened. In March 1999, an immigrationjudge denied their asylum claim, ruling they had failed to establish a”well-founded fear of persecution” if they returned to Iran. An appealfollowed. Last February, after an attorney failed to notify them thattheir appeal had been denied, immigration officers swooped down on theDarzi house.

It was a weekday morning. Mona, who at 18 is the oldest child and lastFebruary was just a few months from graduating high school, heard acommotion outside. Car doors slammed shut. A half-dozen men and womenstomped up the wooden steps to the front door. They were immigrationofficers, come to deport the Darzis back to Iran.

In the Darzis’ living room, the agents told the family to pack theirbags. But there was a complication. What was to be done with theDarzis’ youngest children, Connie and Tina, who, because they were bornin the United States, were Americans? What’s more, Anya, who wasbreast-feeding her youngest child, refused to leave without herchildren.

The officers made a phone call. They would leave Anya and her children.But they would take Khaled to Etowah Detention Center, in Gadsden, Ala.At home, Anya gathered the relatives who lived in the Atlanta area.They called attorney after attorney. Finally they reached Glenn Fogle,an immigration lawyer to whom stories such as this are nothing new.Fogle got Khaled released from jail, where he ended up spending 100days, and filed a motion to re-open the family’s asylum case based onnew grounds — Anya and her oldest daughter’s conversion from Islam toChristianity within the last year. In Iran, the punishment for apostasyis death.

Today in court are not just the Darzis, but members of Eastside BaptistChurch, where Anya worships. They are here to testify, if called upon,that Anya’s conversion was genuine, and not a last-ditch ploy to secureasylum.

The Darzis’ fate will be determined by William Cassidy, one of thetoughest immigration judges in the country. To win an asylum casebefore Cassidy is something of a minor miracle. In a stretch of almostfour years leading up to last October, Cassidy considered 593 asylumrequests and granted only 34. Many of those applications were frompeople fleeing some of the most repressive and violent regimes in theworld. For example, Cassidy received 29 asylum applications fromLiberia; he granted none. He received 16 from Congo; he granted none.He received 56 from Colombia; he granted none. He received 112 fromChina; he granted one.

The vast disparities from city to city — and from judge to judge --raise questions about the application of justice in asylum cases. Is itfair, for example, that a Somali statistically has a better chance forasylum in a court in Memphis than in an Atlanta court? Is it fair thatcases can be won and lost based on whether an applicant looks a judgein the eye, or becomes agitated during questioning, or if the testimonyappears “rehearsed”? Is it fair that an applicant’s chance of winningasylum depends more on which judge hears the case rather than on thatcase’s merits?

“It should be clear that if a judge has an approval rate of 3 percentand the national rate is twenty-something percent, that there’ssomething wrong with how that judge is evaluating cases,” says LauraLichter, a Denver attorney and committee chair within the AmericanImmigration Lawyers Association. “We’re talking about people’s lives.

“Yes, there is fraud in the system. But the vast majority of the peoplewho have made it here to even be in front of a judge have some verylegitimate claims. I think it’s just tragic how the system is failingthem.”

But as the minutes tick by on this January day, with the Darzisawaiting the arrival of the judge, the system is all they have.Finally, the door opens and Cassidy appears. He is a man in his 50s,with a head full of dark hair flecked with gray. As he adjusts hisblack robe, everyone on the hard wooden benches begins to rise indeference. He holds out an arm and shakes his head. “No, you don’t need to stand,” he says.

He invites Fogle and the government attorney back into his chambers todiscuss the case. As the door clicks shut behind them, Marty Godfrey,associate pastor at Eastside and a family friend, turns to the Darzis.

“Now’s the time to start prayin’,” he says.

Asylum applications are filled with horror stories — tales ofrape, torture, forced amputations, murder, imprisonment. Some of thestories are true. Some of them are embellished, or made up out of wholecloth. Deciding which is which is often up to an immigrationjudge.

Although they wear robes and issue decisions from the bench,immigration judges aren’t jurists in the conventional sense. Theyaren’t tenured for life, nor are their decisions precedent-setting. Infact, they aren’t even part of the judiciary arm of the government, butrather the executive branch. They are civil servants and their boss isthe U.S. attorney general. They even have their own union, the NationalAssociation of Immigration Judges, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO. InAtlanta, each of the three judges earns $136,656 a year.

In the 2002 fiscal year, immigration courts handled 73,000 asylumcases. Of those, 734 were heard by immigration judges in Atlanta.

The law is clear on who should get asylum: those who have a”well-founded fear of persecution.” What isn’t so clear is how”well-founded” should be defined — despite a 1987 Supreme Court rulingthat went so far as to reduce that probability to a number. “There issimply no room,” one justice wrote, “for concluding that because anapplicant only has a 10 percent chance of being shot, tortured orotherwise persecuted, that he or she has no well-founded fear of theevent happening.”

Asylum advocates praised the so-called “10 percent standard,” believingthat by essentially lowering an applicant’s burden of proof, moreasylum cases would be granted. After all, advocates often say, a personfleeing persecution usually doesn’t carry with him a note from his dictator.

Seventeen years later, however, that standard is hardly the norm inimmigration courts. “Most immigration judges don’t comply with that 10percent reasonable possibility,” says Joseph Vail, a law professor atthe University of Houston and a former immigration judge in that city.”They’re still stuck with that old mindset — ‘You might belying to me.’” That standard may keep out people who are lying, Vailsays, but it also keeps out people who are telling the truth.

The question, of course, is which is more important. “I think what ismore important is protecting the guy who may get killed if he goes backto his country, as opposed to somebody who might sneak in andfraudulently get asylum,” Vail says. During his four years as animmigration judge, Vail figures, he’s granted between 25 percent and 30percent of the asylum cases that have come before him, making him amongthe least strict in the nation.

In criminal courts, there is a presumption of innocence on the part ofa defendant. For an undocumented alien seeking asylum, there is rarelypresumption of integrity — especially among immigration judges whohave backgrounds as prosecutors.

In October 2000, the San Jose Mercury News reported thatmost of the nation’s immigration judges had previously worked for thegovernment, often as prosecutors, whose job it was to build casesagainst immigrants. Judges whose background was in private practice,however, were 50 percent more likely to grant asylum than those whocame from the government side of the aisle.

“If you’ve worked for the government for a long period of time andyou’ve seen your share of fraud — because there is some fraud-- then you come in with the mindset of, ‘I really have to be carefulabout what I grant because they might be lying to me’,” says Vail.Facing that mindset, Vail says, asylum applicants come into court “withthe deck stacked against them.”

As it happens, all three of Atlanta’s immigration judges — Cassidy,Johnston and Rast — have extensive backgrounds as governmentattorneys. Prior to becoming an immigration judge in 1990, Rast servedas a prosecutor in Florida for 12 years. Johnston spent 25 years in theArmy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps before being tapped as animmigration judge in December 2000. But of all the judges’ backgrounds,it is Cassidy’s that would best foreshadow his strict rulings from thebench. After five years as a prosecutor in Ohio, Cassidy in 1987 spentthe next five years both as an attorney for the Immigration andNaturalization Service and as director of training at INS headquartersin Washington, D.C.

As an INS attorney in Cleveland, he prosecuted companies that didn’thave proper documentation to prove their workers were American.

David Leopold, an immigration attorney in Cleveland, recalls only onecase in which he went up against Cassidy. “He was an excellent lawyer,”Leopold says. “He was tough and he was fair. He was what he should havebeen.”

Another Ohio attorney, Marian Brumbaugh, recalls Cassidy as a “verygood prosecutor” who was “one of the most personable people you couldever meet.”

Brumbaugh, who never had an asylum case against Cassidy, says hefrequently sought to negotiate cases to avoid coming before a judge.”Cassidy was used to making deals. He had been a prosecutor. He knewyou can’t try every case.”

In October 1993, Cassidy was hired as an immigration judge. His firstposting was New York City, one of the largest immigration courts in thecountry. Two years later, Cassidy transferred to Atlanta. He quicklygained a reputation as not only the toughest judge, but the fastest.From 1995 through most of 1999, according to published statistics,Cassidy granted asylum 71 times, while denying it in 3,846 cases. Inthat same time, he decided almost 800 cases more than his closestcompetitor nationwide. Lawyers call it Cassidy’s “rocket docket.”

But tough and fast weren’t the only labels attached to Cassidy. SomeAtlanta immigration attorneys began complaining among themselves thatCassidy just wasn’t fair, and that no judge could grant so few asylumrequests and possibly be adhering to the letter, much less the spirit,of asylum law.

n January 1997, Atlanta immigration attorney David Farshy filed amotion asking Cassidy to recuse himself from a case in which Farshy’sclient, a convicted kidnapper, had applied for asylum. Farshy believedhe stood no chance with Cassidy, who, Farshy says, consistently ruledagainst his clients and repeatedly mispronounced his name as “Farsy.”(“It was demeaning,” Farshy says now.) On April 15, Cassidy calledFarshy’s office to talk about the case. After leaving a message onFarshy’s answering machine, Cassidy, evidently believing he had hungup, resumed a conversation with government attorney Grace Sease, whowas in the judge’s office. Farshy’s machine recorded what was said.

To Farshy, the conversation was irrefutable evidence that Cassidy notonly had engaged in ex parte communication — talking with thegovernment attorney without Farshy present — but had pre-judged thecase before it was even heard. The next day, Farshy submitted atranscript of the recorded conversation as further evidence thatCassidy should recuse himself. After reviewing the transcript, Cassidyagreed to recuse himself, according to a complaint that Farshy filedwith Cassidy’s bosses. But then, moments later, Cassidy reversedhimself and announced he would remain as judge. He eventually deniedthe asylum request.

Farshy was flabbergasted. In his complaint, he wrote that “all of the... actions and conducts were due to Judge Cassidy’s intent to followonly his own personal prejudices and bias, in expense of compromisinglaw and justice.”

In the final sentence of his three-and-a-half-page complaint, Farshywrote, “I cannot trust such a judge and in my opinion no one elseshould trust him.”

Farshy appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which, a yearlater, ruled that Cassidy’s actions “raised the appearance ofimpropriety and should have led to a finding that he was disqualifiedfrom hearing the case.” But Cassidy’s ultimate decision — to denyasylum — had been correct, the board ruled. And so, because whatreally mattered to the board was Cassidy’s final decision, not the wayin which he made it, the board deemed his error “harmless.”

In September 1999, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office ofProfessional Responsibility, in response to Farshy’s complaint,acknowledged that Cassidy had made brief ex parte comments aboutFarshy’s client’s case. Nevertheless, Cassidy’s conduct “did notconstitute professional misconduct or poor judgment.” Nor, theinvestigation concluded, did Cassidy issue an erroneous decision or”pre-judge the matter.”

Today, it is the rare case that brings Farshy before Cassidy. That, anda lingering resentment over how his complaints went nowhere, have leftFarshy with a candor not often found among Atlanta’s immigrationattorneys.

“I guess he just wants to kiss the government’s ass, which I think isterrible,” Farshy says. “He’s a political person and he’ll do anythingto protect his job.”

The rules governing immigration judges forbid them from talkingto the press, meaning Cassidy could not comment for this story. Butamong his defenders is at least one prominent immigration attorney inAtlanta.

“I know Judge Cassidy personally,” says Charles Kuck, who isnational secretary for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.”He’s actually a great guy. He lives right by me. I get along reallywell with him. He goes out of his way to help people. He just doesn’tgrant very many asylum cases.”

There are a few reasons for that, Kuck says. “There’s a lot of badasylum cases. That accounts for a lot of Judge Cassidy’s denials.”That, combined with what Kuck says is Cassidy’s “restrictive” view ofasylum, skew the judge’s statistics.

Still, Kuck has lost enough asylum cases to know the game. “A lot oftimes, if we think a guy has a good case but the factual scenario isnot one the judge here will believe to be meeting the criteria forasylum — but I know that judges in Maryland or Miami will — a lot oftimes, you tell your client, ‘Your best option is to move.’”

Last year, the head of the judges’ union, Dana Marks Keener, who is animmigration judge herself in San Francisco, wrote a letter to animmigration lawyers’ website, warning about the perils of “anyperspective that reduces judicial performance to a numbers game.”

“Some judges have dockets which include many strong asylum cases, butothers have more cases with old claims from countries where conditionshave greatly improved; other reasons vary from city to city, dependingon case assignments.”

Keener wrote that the correct standard by which a judge should bemeasured is not “inherently misleading” statistics, but whether theirdecisions are “well-reasoned and in accord with controlling legalprecedent, on a case-by-case basis.”

One Cassidy case involved a 19-year-old man who was detained atHartsfield-Jackson International Airport last March after trying toenter the United States with a fake Zambian passport. He said his namewas Ilunga Wa Ilunga. He had come from Congo, he explained, by way ofSouth Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia. In Cassidy’s court three monthslater, he represented himself. Through his testimony and his asylumapplication, the following story emerged:

Ilunga grew up in Zaire, where his father worked for the government ofdictator Mobutu Sese Seko. (In 1997, Seko fled to Morocco after hisforces were overthrown by Laurent Kabila, who renamed the countryCongo.) Ilunga and his sister — whose husband was executed by Kabila’sforces — were arrested. In jail, guards would “take a rope, some kindof a rope, and tie it to a brick, and they would tie the other end tomy testicles. Then I would have to stand.” He was also beaten with abelt and kicked.

His sister began throwing up blood. “They were scared and they releasedus,” Ilunga testified. But before he could take her to the hospital,his sister died.

Soon, tribal fighting within Congo erupted. “People were just dying allover the place,” he testified. Ilunga worked for the Red Cross, helpingto bury the dead. They decided to report human rights abuses to foreigngovernments. At one point, Ilunga wrote an article about the tragicevents.

In 2001, four soldiers came to Ilunga’s house. They tried to rape hismother; she resisted, and they shot her four times. They raped hispregnant wife in front of him.

“I didn’t have any choice,” he testified. “I run away.”

When Ilunga arrived in the United States, he had a briefcase ofdocumentation — a briefcase that was confiscated by immigrationauthorities and, Ilunga testified, lost by them. During his hearing, afew snapshots of the town he grew up in were Ilunga’s only evidence.

At his hearing, a government lawyer asked Ilunga what medical treatmenthe received after being released from jail.

“I received some treatment, but it was not medical. It was like anatural treatment, traditional treatment.”

“OK. And do you have any verification of this treatment, any proof ofthis treatment?”

“The treatment, traditional treatment which ...”

“Yes.”

“Yes. I have some tattoo to show it.”

“A tattoo. Do you have any written documentation to verify that youreceived treatment?”

“You mean some written document?”

“Yes.”

“We don’t know that in our, in our country. Sometime even if you go toa normal hospital, they won’t give you any written document.”

In fact, Ilunga had documentation for virtually nothing. He had no copyof the article that he said he’d written, no death certificates for thefamily members who he said had been killed, no hospital records,nothing. He had only his testimony. He could not even prove he was fromCongo.

Cassidy concluded that Ilunga’s statement was not credible. He citedmany reasons. For instance, Cassidy called into question thecircumstances of Ilunga’s release from prison.

“His father being the head of the secret service under Mobutu, such arecognized violator of human rights, and he is the leader of the secretservice in the area, if in fact this is true, which the Courtquestions, the release of the sister just because she was throwing upblood seems to be inconsistent with how the Kabila group may handle thedirect relatives of someone who is head of the secret service forMobutu.”

Cassidy also doubted Ilunga’s testimony about the evening his wife wasallegedly raped. “He stated that ... four military people arrived,ostensibly looking for him. He stands at the door. They go past him andthey rape his wife in front of him. But somehow he is able to make hisescape. The Court did not find that probable.”

Moreover, Ilunga’s written application for asylum (which was preparedwith the help of a translator), omitted certain facts that came outduring testimony.

Ilunga, Cassidy decided, “failed to establish a well-founded fear ofpersecution.” Cassidy denied his asylum request.

When an immigration judge rejects an asylum application, the matter isfrequently appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals. In Ilunga’scase, Fogle, the Darzis’ attorney, took up the appeal. In his brief,Fogle said that Cassidy based his decision “solely on the fact” that hedidn’t believe Ilunga’s testimony. “This does not amount to anyspecific and cogent reason for disbelief of his testimony,” Fogleargued. The appeals board agreed, ruling that Cassidy had “reliedmainly on speculation regarding the plausibility” of Ilunga’s claim.The board upheld Ilunga’s appeal, and he was granted asylum.

Less fortunate were two other clients of Fogle’s. Both were Somaliwomen who had made their way to America via Kenya. Both relayed horrorstories of enslavement. One said she had been burned with cigarettebutts and repeatedly raped, and that whenever she sees a Somali man, “Ishiver.” But in both cases, Cassidy doubted their credibility. In thecase of the woman who said she’d been raped, Cassidy, in his decision,drew “adverse inference from her demeanor,” noting that she hadappeared “agitated and upset” in relating her testimony. In the otherwoman’s case, Cassidy doubted her credibility because her testimonyappeared memorized.

Both he and his wife were born in Baneh, a city of 70,000in western Iran that is largely Kurdish. Kurds are considered theworld’s largest ethnic group without their own country. Largely SunniMuslim, the Kurdish population is 25 million, spread over Turkey,Syria, Iran and Iraq. Roughly a quarter of those Kurds live in Iran,most in the mountainous western region of the country, in cities suchas Baneh.

In 1979, Khaled was 17 when Islamic fundamentalists overthrew the Shah.In return for their support, the Ayatollah Khomeini promised Kurdsautonomy. When the promises went unfulfilled, fighting broke outbetween the Iranian government and the Kurd separatists. Darzi beganferrying medical supplies from the family pharmacy to rebels in themountains surrounding Baneh. One day, government forces bombed a roadon which Khaled and some compatriots were walking. He was the only onewho survived; he still carries shrapnel in his right eye and right arm.

In 1987, assailants trying to break into the pharmacy shot at Khaled.He escaped unharmed, but the same men killed two of the Darzis’neighbors.

In 1990, the government arrested Khaled and his father, and confiscatedthe family pharmacy. They were charged with collaborating with therebellion. Khaled served a year in jail, his father six months.

Anya’s own family was active in the insurgency against the Ayatollah’sregime. All three of her brothers served jail time, one for six years.As a teenager, she distributed anti-Khomeini leaflets around Baneh. Shewas arrested and jailed for a night.

In 1997, Khaled received a letter threatening his and his family’slives if he didn’t hand over money. Khaled went to the police, whopromised they would help him. On his way home, a bullet hit the side ofhis car. An hour later, the phone rang. From what the person told him,Khaled realized the police were in on the blackmail attempt. Hedecided, finally, to leave Iran with his wife and two children once andfor all.

Khaled and his family had traveled to the United States once before. Toensure that they would return, the authorities had demanded they leaveone child behind. So as he prepared to leave his country for good,Khaled paid for fake papers that would convince the authorities he hada third child. They arrived in America on May 14, 1997.

In denying the Darzis’ application for asylum in March 1999, Cassidycited discrepancies in dates between the family’s written applicationand their testimony. He also doubted the Darzis’ claim that they madeup a third child in order to be allowed to leave Iran, especiallyconsidering that the Iranian police knew Khaled was a rebelsympathizer.

“Someone who is well known to the government, they should, and continueto know, how many people are in his family,” Cassidy said in his oraldecision. “I did not find the story regarding the alleged made-up childthat allowed the whole family to enter the United States to be telling,to be credible.”

In the end, Cassidy determined that Iran “seeks no harm against thisindividual, has not singled him out for any type of mistreatment.” Hedenied the asylum application.

Like most unsuccessful asylum applicants, Darzi appealed to the Boardof Immigration Appeals. Ideally, the appeals board is a greatequalizer, a safety net for those immigrants on the wrong end of a baddecision. There, a panel of three board members would review each case,deciding whether the judge’s decision had been right or wrong. As Kucksays, “That’s where the mistakes are supposed to be corrected.”

But in 2002, to clear a backlog of 56,000 cases, U.S. Attorney GeneralJohn Ashcroft announced sweeping changes at the appeals board. Insteadof increasing the number of members to deal with the backlog, he cutthe number from 23 to 11 — “one of the dumber ideas out of JohnAshcroft’s brain,” Kuck says. He eliminated de novo review offacts — that is, a review of cases from the beginning. What’s more, nolonger would each case be examined by the three-member panel. Instead,most cases would be ruled on by one member, who would issue a “summaryaffirmance” — a one-line endorsement of the immigration judge’sdecision. Only “more complex and difficult” cases would warrant athree-member panel. (Ilunga’s case, as it happens, was one of them.)

Asylum advocates were outraged, charging that the switch would denyimmigrants their right to due process. And although Ashcroft’s statedintentions were to speed up a glacial bureaucracy, his choice of whichboard members to keep and which members to fire smacked of politics.

“That whole process was clearly intended not just to move cases along,”says Vail, the former immigration judge. “If you look at the people whowere removed from the board, they essentially removed everyone who wasconsidered liberal or moderate. ... What they’ve done with the board isabsolutely terrible.”

Ashcroft’s rubber-stamping initiative — and his gutting of the board-- cleared the backlog in mere months, but not without consequences.The burden has simply shifted to the federal courts, which is the nextstep for undocumented aliens dissatisfied with the board’s rulings. Inthe year after Ashcroft made his changes, appeals of decisions almostquadrupled. In Atlanta, home of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals,there were 67 immigration-related appeals filed in 2001. In 2003, therewere 367, according to court clerk Thomas Kahn.

Unfortunately for asylum applicants, the 11th Circuit Court has thereputation of being the toughest on asylum applications. Indeed,immigration attorneys can’t recall the last time the appeals court heredecided an asylum case in favor of the immigrant.

While Fogle and the government attorney, Molly Frazer, discussthe Darzi case, Cassidy emerges to explain that if the two sides canstrike an agreement, there will be no need for a hearing. “I only dealin cases of controversy,” he says.

But no agreement is reached, andthe hearing begins. As in other court proceedings, witnesses must besequestered before they testify, so everyone but Anya, who is the firstwitness, files outside. Cassidy swears her in. She sits on the edge ofthe chair and smiles nervously. A tissue box sits on the table next to her. She talks so softly that Cassidy asks her several times to speak up.

From his chair, Fogle clicks his blue pen and starts to ask her what first brought her to church. Anya explains that she went to church periodically with Angela, her sister-in-law. One day, she discovered that her daughter, Mona, had been baptized and hadn’t told her parents. Anya says she became even more interested. At church, she found the congregants honest. “They were very loving people,” she explains.

In November 2002, she decided to become a Christian. Cassidy asks her when she was baptized.

“April 17,” she says.

“This was after your husband was arrested?” he asks.

“Yes.”

Fogle asks what will happen if she returns to Iran as a Christian.

“How do I describe it? Here we have freedom. There, everyone will ignore me. I can say they will kill me. I have seen the effect over there.”

“The same for your children?” Fogle asks.

“Yes.”

“Has your husband converted?”

“No.”

“You’re still working on him?”

Anya smiles. “Yes, hopefully.”

Soon it is Frazer’s turn. At the time of Anya’s conversion, the Darzis had lost their asylum case. Why, Frazer wants to know, did she convert knowing she might be returning to Iran?

“When God comes into your life, you ... I really didn’t care about this,” Anya says.

“You weren’t worried about being killed?”

“I didn’t think about that.”

Frazer starts quizzing Anya’s knowledge of Christianity. It is a common tactic in cases such as these. Anya gets flustered as she tries to name the Holy Trinity. “Father, son ... and God,” she says.

Frazer moves on. She asks Anya to name a few books of the Bible, to list the sacraments, to give some differences between the Old and New Testaments. Anya is visibly nervous. Her hands are clasped tightly together.

“The Old is about law. The New is ... we pray, we worship, we help each other.”

Fogle next calls Angela Darzi. Fogle asks her what changes she’s detected in her sister-in-law since her conversion to Christianity.

“Profound changes,” Angela says. “She’s studying the word of God on her own. ... Ever since then, she’s had a peace about her.”

Cassidy asks what other ways Anya has “manifested her new belief in Christianity.”

“She’s taking the initiative to go to church and pray,” Angela says. “She asks a lot of in-depth questions.”

“What type?” Frazer asks.

“The trinity,” Angela says. “She knows what the trinity means, but wants to know what the Holy Spirit has to offer.”

Angela talks more about her relatives’ fear of returning to Iran as Kurds.

Frazer cuts to the point: “Is it possible her conversion is a way to stay in the U.S.?”

“No,” Angela says. “She’s not like that.”

The third witness is Mona Darzi. She is poised and assured, and speaks without a trace of an accent. She explains on the stand that she was never a religious person, but after going to church with her aunt Angela, she decided that Christianity was for her.

“Everything I was going through, they were talking about,” she says.

With a friend, Mona was baptized. But she didn’t tell her mother. “I was afraid to tell her because I didn’t know how she would react.” But when Anya found the baptism certificate, Mona says, “she was fine with it.”

Frazer asks Mona how her mother’s “behavior” has changed since her conversion.

“She talks about how she felt like a new person, like how something went through her.” She noticed that her mother began reading the Bible every night.

As each witness finishes testifying, they are allowed to remain in the courtroom. When Mona finishes, she walks to her mother, who has been smiling. They sit on the same bench.

“You can sit closer to your mom,” Cassidy says good-naturedly. “It’s not like class here. You’re not gonna get any questions later.”

The final witness is Godfrey, the associate pastor. After he is sworn in and takes his seat, Cassidy asks if Godfrey has ever rejected any candidate for baptism.

“Yes,” Godfrey replies.

“How often?”

“Not very often.”

Cassidy explains his point. “This conversion occurred after her husband was arrested, after the order of deportation,” he says. “The immigration laws look askance at last-minute conversions.” Still, he says, the law allows for them if they are genuine.

Godfrey nods. He leans forward slightly with his hands steepled in his lap. He explains that it is clear to him when someone is undergoing a deep life change such as a conversion. In Anya’s case, there was a “peace she was looking for internally.”

“There’s a difference when someone attends church out of ritual,” he says. With Anya, her conversion is characterized by “less than a religious fervor than by wanting to understand the Bible.”

This seems enough for Cassidy. He explains that he will grant the request. All that’s needed first is a fingerprint check on the Darzi family. If that goes through without a problem, they will get asylum. He compliments everyone’s testimony, especially Mona’s. “Nice job, Glenn,” he says.

With that, they are done.

Anya is almost crying. She hugs her sister-in-law, her daughter, her husband. She hugs Fogle.

Outside, as they discuss where to celebrate, Khaled is grinning.

“I feel free. Before I felt heavy. Now I feel light.”

Editor’s Note, continued: The Darzi family agreed to be interviewed forthis story when it ran in print on February 26, 2004. At that time, they didnot realize that the story would be published on the Internet, andpotentially accessible by authorities in Iran. The Darzi family has Kurdishrelatives still living in Iran. Concerned for the well-being of theirrelatives there, the Darzis contacted the author of the article. CreativeLoafing made the decision to keep the article online, but to change thename of the family in order to protect the relatives still living in Iran.