The daily debates over the influx of asylum seekers obscure the precious lives that hang in the balance. I recently had the humbling and life-giving experience for six months of hosting a transwoman who fled Honduras after years in hiding out of fear of being persecuted for her gender identity.
Before leaving for the United States at age 23, Areli Zavala had lived for over two years in hiding to avoid being blackmailed into the drug trade or risk being outed and killed. During her short life, she saw transgender and gay friends assaulted and murdered.
She traveled to the United States on foot and by train along with a caravan of other LGBTQ Hondurans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans. They were among other migrants and asylum seekers traveling to this country, propelled by the hope for a future, any future.
Areli’s experience seeking asylum was marked by assaults on human dignity and violations of her rights: From sitting for days in the “La Hielera” (Spanish for “ice box” – how asylum seekers and migrants describe the freezing conditions of the Customs and Border Protection holding center) while waiting for her hearing, to having all of her belongings taken and never returned, to being held for four months at Cibola County Correctional Center despite having been given the right to legally pursue her asylum case in this country.
One of her fellow travelers, Roxana Hernandez, died while in custody. Areli suffered stomach issues from poor nutrition, viruses, isolation and constant pressure to self-deport.
On July 2, almost 16 months after entering this country, Areli was granted asylum. She became a legal resident two days after celebrating her first SF Pride Parade, and two days before celebrating her first Fourth of July outside of a jail cell.
Areli’s story stands in contrast to the rhetoric and policy making coming out of Washington, D.C., where politicians are inventing terms such as “asylum fraud” to justify attempts to illegally prevent people from seeking refuge in this country.
The only fraud in Areli’s story – and the thousands of courageous people like her – is illegitimate border enforcement that it is threatening our democracy: Concentrating people in deplorable detention facilities like Cibola; defining black, brown, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders and indigenous people as problems while failing to contend with the larger context in which their quests for refuge exist; hunting people down and disappearing them from their communities; restricting asylum, criminalizing migration and banning people from entry based on membership to specific classes. These fraudulent activities are systematically denying people their human rights and weakening our democracy.
These tactics all come from a playbook as old as our country and have only ever served to defraud people of color of their rights and maintain white supremacy at the expense of democracy.
During the 12 months after her release as Areli awaited ruling on her case, she laughed a lot. But I never heard her laughter ring out as I did the night we celebrated her right to stay in this country. It is what the promise of freedom, newly found, sounds like after half a lifetime living in fear and uncertainty.
It had the resonance of feeling like one belongs – of knowing that the country that you asked to take you in and provide refuge when you had no place to turn accepted you back. It was pure, restorative joy and it continues to fill me with hope that maybe one day we will truly realize the promise of our democratic ideals.
Alex Desautels, an Oakland resident, is a senior program manager at The California Endowment.
