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Three more Oregon asylum seekers—from India, Afghanistan and Iran—were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the past two weeks, U.S. District Court filings show, bringing total arrests to eight in the month of June.
The three arrests show that ICE is broadening the locations where it arrests asylum seekers, expanding beyond the courthouse arrests that have made headlines in recent weeks. In all three cases, petitions for writs of habeas corpus were filed June 24.
One of the asylum seekers, a 24-year-old man identified only by his initials, EM, was arrested 10 minutes into his drive home from a required immigration court appearance, where he had received a continuance in his proceedings. EM writes that he was targeted by the Taliban in Afghanistan as a Shia Muslim and because of his Hazara ethnicity.
In a declaration, he says plainclothed ICE agents followed him and a friend on their way home from the courthouse, threatening to break a car window if he did not follow them. “That scared me when he threatened to break the window and drag me away because it reminded me of the Taliban in Afghanistan,” EM wrote.
Another petitioner, identified by the initials SF, was arrested on a routine drive to the gym, though he had a regular check-in at the Portland ICE facility scheduled for July 7.
SF, a citizen of Iran, tried to file for asylum, but his final appeal was dismissed in January 2004, though “respondents have not been able to execute the final order of removal,” the petition reads. It emphasized that recent bombings in Iran have made human rights conditions in the country “atrocious,” and that the petitioner’s conversion to Christianity and his U.S. citizen spouse and children will “sharply increase the possibility of his imprisonment in Iran, or torture or execution.”
The third arrest was of an Indian national checking in with the ICE office in Eugene. The man, identified only by his initials, GS, has an asylum application pending with the Portland Immigration Court.
U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ordered ICE not to move GS out of Oregon, though U.S. attorneys said he was transferred to the Tacoma ICE detention center on June 24.
On Monday afternoon, The Oregonian reported, U.S. District Judge Michael Simon ordered the release of an asylum seeker from Mexico who was arrested outside Portland Immigration Court June 5.
