ACLU files petition for asylum seeker

A Haitian teacher who sought asylum in the United States remains in the Geauga County Safety Center despite demands by the ACLU to free the man who was twice granted asylum.

The ACLU wrote a letter to federal officials demanding that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement release Ansly Damus from the Chardon jail by 5 p.m., Sept. 10. That deadline passed without his release and the ACLU has now filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court demanding that the judge release Damus from the Geauga County Safety Center.

Damus fled his home country in fear nearly four years ago. According to a blog post by Damus posted on the ACLU’s website in March 2018, he was leading a youth seminar in his hometown of Grand-Riviere-du-Nord on Sept. 15, 2014. He was in-discussion on 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 — breaking several bones and leaving me with scars which I bear to this day,” Damus wrote in the blog post. “They set my motorcycle on fire and threatened to kill me.”

Fearing for his life, he fled Haiti 10 days later, leaving behind his wife, two children, parents and siblings. He went first to Brazil, spending 18 months there.

“I found work in construction but faced discrimination” he said. “I was told I was an animal, that people like me were flooding the country to steal jobs. There was no life for me there, but I was afraid to go back to Haiti.”

He left Brazil for the United States, arriving at the California border in October 2016 seeking asylum. He was interviewed by an officer who found that he had a credible fear of persecution.

Damus was twice granted asylum, but both times the government appealed. As he has for the past 22 months, Damus remains in the Geauga County Safety Center under the authority of ICE’s Detroit Field Office.

“All the while, I have been imprisoned,” Damus wrote. “Some would call it detention, a euphemism. But I am a human being trapped behind metal bars and walls, with no access to the outdoors, the Internet, or email. For the past 11 months, there have been no other French speakers at Geauga whom I can talk to. I spend my days in near total isolation, finding comfort only when I’m reading my Bible.”

ICE has never suggested that Damus poses any danger to the community, ACLU attorneys wrote in the habeas petition filed in The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan Southern Division. In the lawsuit, attorneys argued that Damus’ prolonged detention violates the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment and the Immigration and Nationality Act.

“This court should order Mr. Damus’ immediate release because his detention bears no reasonable relation to any government purpose and because his parole review fails to provide any factual basis or facially legitimate and bona fide reason for his ongoing imprisonment.”

Alternatively, the court should order an immediate bond hearing where the government “bears the burden of justifying by clear and convincing evidence that Mr. Damus’ detention is necessary to prevent his flight or to protect public safety,” the lawsuit states.

In the ACLU’s Sept. 4 letter demanding Damus’ immediate release, they argue that Damus is not a flight risk and 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.

If released Damus would reside with a Cleveland Heights couple who visits him weekly and writes him letters three times a week.

“When I feared for my life and arrived at the border, it felt like the U.S. had extended an open hand to me,” Damus wrote in his blog post. “Yet in accepting it, I have been condemned to indefinite imprisonment, even though I have committed no crime.”