The INS sends its detainees to local jails because it lacks enough detention facilities. "It makes a lot of sense to build our own facility here, but with the kind of money we get, it just doesn't happen," said David Venturella, assistant INS district director for detention and deportation. (Photo by Jerry Gholson)] In December and January, the Reporter surveyed officials at the 24 jails that contract with the INS and found inconsistent, and often inappropriate, conditions. In 12 jails, for example, asylum seekers are housed with criminal immigrants. And in four facilities, asylum seekers are mixed with the general jail population.

Asylum seekers are being treated like criminals, said Mary Meg McCarthy, director of the Heartland Alliance’s Midwest Immigrant Rights Center in Chicago, which provides free legal services to asylum seekers. "It’s not a crime to ask for protection when you are fleeing persecution in your home country."

Chicago INS District Director Brian Perryman disagrees. "I’m not sure if I want to identify [asylum seekers] as separate people as the other criminal [immigrants]," he said. "They violated the immigration law by attempting to enter the United States illegally. … And we do believe that they have committed a federal crime."

But some see a sour irony: "The Constitution often doesn’t protect asylum applicants because these are not criminal cases," said Craig B. Mousin, a DePaul University adjunct professor of immigration law. "So asylum seekers lose at both ends: They get the negatives of being jailed with convicted felons, but they don’t get the protection offered to those felons."

Bloody Conflict
The winding path that led Moukoulou to DuPage County Jail began in Brazzaville, the Congolese capital, where he found himself in the midst of conflict.

In October 1997, former President Denis Sassou ousted President Pascal Lissouba after a six-month civil war that claimed thousands of lives on both sides. But the power struggle between the two has dragged on ever since.

Last April, Sassou’s Cobra militia entered Moukoulou’s upscale neighborhood, searching and looting the homes of Lissouba’s Mbembe tribe, Moukoulou said. Armed men in military garb kicked down his door, while Moukoulou and his wife, Ovapiri, 23, watched TV. The militia cornered them in the living room, shot twice into the ceiling and demanded that Ovapiri disrobe, he said. The two broke into tears, begged for their lives and offered everything they had in return.

The intruders ordered the couple to leave the house or be killed. After three weeks in hiding, Moukoulou and his wife fled the country, using phony French passports because their real names would reveal their Mbembe identities. They headed for Paris, where Moukoulou’s uncle, a French citizen, owns a security company.

But after two days in Paris, Moukoulou left his wife with his uncle and flew to the United States because the French government, which favored Sassou, was not granting asylum to Congolese refugees.

Moukoulou considered the States his second home. In 1994, he had lived in Fort Worth for 10 months, attending a flight school. A friend there had advised him to try to pass through Chicago customs with his fake French passport. But when Moukoulou landed at O’Hare, customs officials detained him under the 1996 law, which was partly intended to weed out phony asylum claims.

Advocates for stricter immigration controls have hailed the legislation. "You have to have some means of monitoring the asylum program," said Joseph Daleiden, executive director of the Midwest Coalition to Reform Immigration, a non-profit in northwest suburban Northfield. "The alternative is widespread fraud."

The law established "expedited removal," a swift deportation procedure that gives INS inspectors at "ports of entry" the authority to issue a deportation order unless a new arrival expresses a fear of persecution, based on one of five grounds: race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.

At O’Hare, the INS handled 673 people under expedited removal between Oct. 1, 1997, and Sept. 30, 1998. Of those, inspectors deported 533, including 422 Mexicans, according to the INS. The remaining 140 made asylum claims.

Potential asylees are held in detention for at least 48 hours to prepare for a "credible fear" interview with an asylum officer. If the officer finds no "significant possibility" for winning asylum, deportation resumes. Unless an immigration judge overturns the decision on appeal, the detainee gets deported, Esbrook said.

Judges uphold the asylum officers’ decisions in about 83 percent of all appeals, according to a March 1998 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office. Claimants deemed credible win the right to the last test: a hearing before an immigration judge.

Critics assert that the law places enormous power in the hands of "low-level" officials who may be inadequately trained to handle asylum cases. And they are troubled by the potential for abuse because the process is closed to public scrutiny.

In December and January, the Reporter surveyed officials at the 24 jails that contract with the INS and found inconsistent, and often inappropriate, conditions. In 12 jails, for example, asylum seekers are housed with criminal immigrants. And in four facilities, asylum seekers are mixed with the general jail population.

Asylum seekers are being treated like criminals, said Mary Meg McCarthy, director of the Heartland Alliance’s Midwest Immigrant Rights Center in Chicago, which provides free legal services to asylum seekers. "It’s not a crime to ask for protection when you are fleeing persecution in your home country."

Chicago INS District Director Brian Perryman disagrees. "I’m not sure if I want to identify [asylum seekers] as separate people as the other criminal [immigrants]," he said. "They violated the immigration law by attempting to enter the United States illegally. … And we do believe that they have committed a federal crime."

But some see a sour irony: "The Constitution often doesn’t protect asylum applicants because these are not criminal cases," said Craig B. Mousin, a DePaul University adjunct professor of immigration law. "So asylum seekers lose at both ends: They get the negatives of being jailed with convicted felons, but they don’t get the protection offered to those felons."

Bloody Conflict
The winding path that led Moukoulou to DuPage County Jail began in Brazzaville, the Congolese capital, where he found himself in the midst of conflict.

In October 1997, former President Denis Sassou ousted President Pascal Lissouba after a six-month civil war that claimed thousands of lives on both sides. But the power struggle between the two has dragged on ever since.

Last April, Sassou’s Cobra militia entered Moukoulou’s upscale neighborhood, searching and looting the homes of Lissouba’s Mbembe tribe, Moukoulou said. Armed men in military garb kicked down his door, while Moukoulou and his wife, Ovapiri, 23, watched TV. The militia cornered them in the living room, shot twice into the ceiling and demanded that Ovapiri disrobe, he said. The two broke into tears, begged for their lives and offered everything they had in return.

The intruders ordered the couple to leave the house or be killed. After three weeks in hiding, Moukoulou and his wife fled the country, using phony French passports because their real names would reveal their Mbembe identities. They headed for Paris, where Moukoulou’s uncle, a French citizen, owns a security company.

But after two days in Paris, Moukoulou left his wife with his uncle and flew to the United States because the French government, which favored Sassou, was not granting asylum to Congolese refugees.

Moukoulou considered the States his second home. In 1994, he had lived in Fort Worth for 10 months, attending a flight school. A friend there had advised him to try to pass through Chicago customs with his fake French passport. But when Moukoulou landed at O’Hare, customs officials detained him under the 1996 law, which was partly intended to weed out phony asylum claims.

Advocates for stricter immigration controls have hailed the legislation. "You have to have some means of monitoring the asylum program," said Joseph Daleiden, executive director of the Midwest Coalition to Reform Immigration, a non-profit in northwest suburban Northfield. "The alternative is widespread fraud."

The law established "expedited removal," a swift deportation procedure that gives INS inspectors at "ports of entry" the authority to issue a deportation order unless a new arrival expresses a fear of persecution, based on one of five grounds: race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.

At O’Hare, the INS handled 673 people under expedited removal between Oct. 1, 1997, and Sept. 30, 1998. Of those, inspectors deported 533, including 422 Mexicans, according to the INS. The remaining 140 made asylum claims.

Potential asylees are held in detention for at least 48 hours to prepare for a "credible fear" interview with an asylum officer. If the officer finds no "significant possibility" for winning asylum, deportation resumes. Unless an immigration judge overturns the decision on appeal, the detainee gets deported, Esbrook said.

Judges uphold the asylum officers’ decisions in about 83 percent of all appeals, according to a March 1998 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office. Claimants deemed credible win the right to the last test: a hearing before an immigration judge.

Critics assert that the law places enormous power in the hands of "low-level" officials who may be inadequately trained to handle asylum cases. And they are troubled by the potential for abuse because the process is closed to public scrutiny.

"Expedited removal is the black box—nobody really knows what’s going on," said Karen Musalo, director of the International Human Rights and Migration Project at Santa Clara University, and co-director of a 1998 study on the process. "The only information about it is anecdotal."

INS officials say inspectors receive at least eight hours of training on asylum cases, and every deportation order is reviewed by the port director, and if necessary, the district director. The district director has never overturned a deportation order, said Gail Montenegro, a public affairs specialist for the Chicago office.

Under the old law, asylum seekers had an automatic right to be heard by an immigration judge. If the judge ruled against them, they could appeal to the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals and then the federal courts—which could take five years or more.

"The process was so long, so time-consuming, that the system simply didn’t work," Esbrook said. "As a result, you had the United States simply unable to return people who had absolutely no right to enter the country."

Under the new system, the district director can "parole" asylum seekers who pass the credible fear interview. Of all 140 asylum claims made in Chicago last year, about 135 were found credible, and Perryman granted parole in 124, according to the INS. Others, including Moukoulou, failed to meet the criteria for parole—having a friend or a family member nearby. Asylum seekers stay in detention for an average of 34 days nationally, and five days to two weeks in Chicago before they are paroled.

"What disappoints me the most is that most detainees are ultimately released," said immigration attorney Berten, whose clients all have been granted parole. "Any delay they encounter seems to me to be unnecessary in most cases."

But the INS maintains that the process is rife with fabrications. In October, for example, Victor Voinenko, 34, of north suburban Evanston, was charged with helping immigrants fraudulently obtain asylum. U.S. Attorney Scott R. Lassar charged that Voinenko accepted about $13,000 from 23 immigrants for helping them pose as persecuted Russian Jews in a scheme that lasted from 1993 until about October 1997.

Voinenko faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine in a plea agreement entered on Oct. 30. A judge will rule on it this month.

Jail Time
Advocates say it’s unrealistic to expect every asylum seeker to have proper documents. "When you are in a country of complete turmoil, and your life is in danger, you just can’t wait around to get a document," McCarthy said.

Moukoulou said he told a French-speaking officer at O’Hare that he was using his fake passport to ask for political asylum in the United States. "But he told me they couldn’t let me go," he said.

After about eight hours at the airport, Moukoulou said he was handcuffed and taken to an unidentified local jail, where he spent the night in a cell with five other immigrants. An official gave him a list of immigration lawyers’ phone numbers.

In the morning, he was transferred again—first to the INS-run Broadview Service Staging Area, just west of Chicago, then to the DuPage County Jail. He was assigned to a cell in a block with 15 other immigrants, including criminals awaiting deportation, and two or three asylum seekers, he said. "You escape from fear. But then, they put you back in fear," he said.

Some detainees, like "the big Cuban immigrant who spent 17 years for murder," dictated the block’s activities, he said. "If he wanted you to watch ‘Jerry Springer’ at 11 o’clock, then you had no choice."

Moukoulou spent most days reading immigration books and writing to human rights organizations. "I was afraid that they would send me back to my country," he said. "You live on suspicions."

He could not contact his wife because her address and phone number in Paris were tucked away inside his belongings impounded at the Broadview facility, and INS officials refused to retrieve them, he said.

The INS does not comment on individual asylum cases, Montenegro said. But she said the agency routinely allows detainees to retrieve their belongings upon request.

Since 1995, the average daily population of INS detainees has more than doubled nationwide—from 6,600 to 16,000. Of those, 5,000 people are held in INS facilities and federal prisons administered by the Bureau of Prisons, INS figures show.

DuPage County Jail is one of about 475 jails nationwide that provide bed space for the rest. The INS pays an average of $55 a day for each immigrant.

In fiscal year 1998, Congress allocated a record $729 million for detention and deportation of immigrants. The Chicago district, which includes Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, received about $4.6 million.

But critics contend local jails are not up to the task. The friction between detainees and jail officials has led to hunger strikes, suicide attempts and beatings.

At a privately run detention facility in Elizabeth, N.J., INS detainees triggered a melee on June 18, 1995, to protest abusive treatment. Guards abandoned the facility until SWAT teams regained control, according to an INS report. The INS later terminated its contract with ESMOR Inc., which ran the facility.

Since 1996, detainees in the Chicago district—including asylum seekers—have increased by about 25 percent, to an average of 200 detainees daily. The Broadview center—the area’s only detention facility—handles about 35 detainees during the day. At night and on weekends, they are transferred to local jails scattered across three states, said David Venturella, assistant district director for detention and deportation.

"To shuttle people around like that is expensive and disruptive," said Allyson Collins, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, a worldwide non-profit based in New York. And the arrangement may impede legal assistance, said Mousin of DePaul University.

Between Oct. 1, 1997, and Feb. 28, 1998, about 11 percent of all detained immigrants, including asylum seekers, were represented by legal counsel in immigration courts, compared to almost 60 percent of non-detained immigrants facing deportation, according to statistics from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, an agency of the U.S. Department of Justice.

"We do recognize that there are some difficulties," Venturella said. "And we are trying to put in place the representation program that works with advocacy groups that represent immigrants."

Attorney McCarthy helped Moukoulou beat tough odds: Less than 9 percent of asylum applicants who appeared before Chicago immigration judges won between Oct. 1, 1996, and Sept. 30, 1997.

Moukoulou was granted asylum on Sept. 17, and walked out of immigration court at 55 E. Monroe St. a free man. He is eligible to apply for permanent resident status in one year. "I didn’t completely realize I was free until I talked to my wife," he said, adding that she cried when she heard his voice. As Moukoulou’s wife, Ovapiri is now eligible for asylum too.

Moukoulou now lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Rogers Park on the North Side, and works as a housekeeper at the Hilton Chicago and Towers at 720 S. Michigan Ave. Despite the bitter memories, he said he’ll stay in Chicago and wait for Ovapiri to rejoin him.

"Maybe it will take me 10 years, or five…" to get my life back together, he said. "But now that I’m here, I would like to see what will happen."

For more information on asylum, visit the following Web sites:
Amnesty International
U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service
Human Rights Watch
Midwest Coalition to Reform Immigrants
General Accounting Office report on Expedited Removal

Contributing: Danielle Gordon and Natalie Pardo. Rebecca Anderson, Heather Kuipers, Felicia McCarthy, Michael Rohner, Cedric L. Stines and Vickey Velazquez helped research this article.