The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
ACLU demands release of Haitian asylum seeker
Man is being held in Geauga County jail
The ACLU is demanding the release of a Haitian asylum seeker who has spent nearly two years in the Geauga County Safety Center.
The organization wrote a letter to the federal government stating that it will take “immediate legal action and pursue all available remedies under the law” if the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office does not release Ansly Damus by 5 p.m. Sept. 10.
According to the ACLU’s letter, Damus is a former ethics teacher who is seeking asylum in the United States after fleeing from Haiti, where he was beaten and received death threats from an armed gang associated with a local government official.
Damus had mentioned that official in seminars on corruption, and was targeted as a result, the letter states. Damus fled first to Brazil but encountered discrimination and harassment there as well. He then sought asylum in the U.S.
He has been in immigration detention since October 2016, despite having twice won asylum before an immigration judge (the government twice appealed), the ACLU stated. He is currently in the Geauga County Jail under the authority of ICE’s Detroit Field Office.
Damus presented himself to authorities of point-ofentry to the United States and was found by an asylum officer to have a credible fear of persecution, according to the letter. He has been denied release on parole several times, most recently on Aug. 8.
“The Parole Directive provides for the parole in the public interest where, absent exceptional circumstances, an asylum seeker establishes his identity and proves he presents neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community,” the organization stated in the letter.
The ACLU stated that the government has not alleged that Damus is a danger to the community and the sole reason that the government has asserted for his ongoing attention is flight risk. Damus is not a flight risk, they argue.
“The sole reason ICE has asserted for deeming Mr. Damus a flight risk is that he purportedly lacks ‘substantial ties to the community,’” the letter states. “This is plainly incorrect. Rather, Mr. Damus has developed extensive ties to the community in Ohio. As Mr. Damus explained in his most recent parole request of July 20, 2018, he would live, if released, with U.S. citizen sponsors in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, who have come to know him well during his time in detention, visiting him weekly and writing him letters three times a week.”
The couple, Melody Hart and Gary Benjamin, a magistrate judge for Cleveland Heights Municipal Court, submitted a joint letter in support of Damus’ parole request, explaining their support for him and describing the strong ties that he has developed in the community while in detention.
Damus submitted dozens of letters of support from other community letters, including a Cleveland Heights Municipal Court judge, local faith leaders, and a Cleveland Heights City Council member among others.
The fact that Mr. Damus has developed such strong ties to Ohio is remarkable given that he has spent the entirety of his two years in the United States behind bars; indeed, it is difficult to imagine an arriving asylum seeker in his position developing stronger community ties,” the ACLU wrote.
They also argue that Damus has a strong incentive to appear for further immigration proceedings because he has twice won asylum before an immigration judge and is represented by an expert immigration attorney in his removal case. Damus is also willing to submit to reasonable supervision conditions, including electronic monitoring if it’s necessary to secure his release.
In a March 22 blog post on the ACLU’s website translated to English from Haitian Creole, Damus said he spends his days in nearly total isolation, finding comfort only when he is reading the Bible.
“’Safety Center’ is a strange name for a jail with no outdoor space, where immigrant detainees are kept in windowless rooms. I have not felt fresh air in my lungs or the sun on my face for more than a year,” Damus wrote. “I have not felt safe for years.”
At the jail, Damus wrote that he has seen other asylum seekers give up and return to the countries they fled in danger because the price of seeking safety — imprisonment for months or years on end — was just too high.
“I am still fighting,” he wrote.
In March, Damus was named as a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU, Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, Human Rights First, and Covington & Burling LLP, challenging the Trump administration’s arbitrary detention of asylum seekers fleeing persecution, torture, or death in their countries of origin. Five ICE field offices are named in the lawsuit, including the Detroit office that covers Ohio. The ACLU said the officers have “almost entirely stopped granting parole since early 2017.”
In July, a federal court blocked Trump’s arbitrary detention of asylum seekers and ordered a case-bycase review of whether each one should be released on humanitarian parole. Despite the injunction, Damus was denied parole on Aug. 8, which an ACLU spokesperson cited as the reasoning for the demand letter.