U.S. agrees to release Haitian held for 2 years in Geauga jail

ANN ARBOR, MICH. >> The U.S. government has agreed to release a Haitian man who was granted asylum but has been in custody for two years in Geauga County Safety Center because of appeals.

Judge Judith Levy disclosed the deal Thursday, a day after holding a hearing in federal court in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Ansly Damus is a teacher from Haiti who entered the U.S. in 2016 and sought asylum, saying his life was at risk because he criticized a political leader.

The American Civil Liberties Union says Damus has been locked up in a windowless room at the jail in Muson Township.

Levy doesn’t have a role in the asylum dispute. But the ACLU sued to try to win his release while the case is pending.

Damus will wear an ankle monitor and live with a couple in Cleveland Heights.

Damus fled his home country in fear four years ago.

On Sept. 15, 2014, Damus, an ethics teacher, was leading a youth seminar in his hometown of GrandRiviere-du-Nord. He was discussing the problem of corruption in Haitian politics when he named a local official as an example of someone who works with gangs to terrorize the population.

On that same day, he was attacked by the gang affiliated with that politician.

“Men dragged me off my motorcycle and savagely beat me,” Damus wrote in a March 2018 blog post on the ACLU’s website. “They set my motorcycle on fire and threatened to kill me.”

Days after the attack he fled Haiti, leaving behind his wife, two children, parents and siblings.

Damus headed first to Brazil, spending 18 months there. During his time there he found construction work, but encountered discrimination.

“I was told I was an animal, that people like me were flooding the country to steal jobs,” he wrote in the blog post. “There was no life for me there, but I was afraid to go back to Haiti.”