On January 17, 2016, Sadat Ibrahim, a gay man from Accra, Ghana, arrived at the San Ysidro U.S. border checkpoint between San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico, pleading for help. He asked for asylum, telling immigration officials that he had fled home after he was ambushed and attacked by an anti-gay group. Homosexuality is illegal in Ghana, punishable by up to three years in jail, and vigilante gangs often terrorize gay people. According to testimony Ibrahim gave to an asylum officer, one of his friends had been beaten by an anti-gay gang in August 2015 and was forced to give up the names of gay acquaintances, including Ibrahim. Another friend texted Ibrahim to warn him, and he immediately went home to collect his belongings and leave the area. But as he was packing, gang members forced themselves into his apartment and attacked him. Ibrahim says he was stabbed in his left arm and only just managed to escape by hailing down a nearby taxicab. “They stabbed me and gave me a cut on my back and hand. I received treatment at the hospital. I couldn’t walk for one week,” he told the asylum officer. “The group posted the incident on the social media with a picture of me. They said that I was gay and asked people to arrest me whenever they saw me.” Ibrahim didn’t report the incident to the police out of fear. While hiding out in a nearby town, he plotted his escape to the United States. He had made it to Tijuana via Brazil and then Belize, paying a man he met there $500 to help guide him into Mexico. When asked what he thought would happen if he returned to Ghana, he responded, “I fear I am going to die. I will be killed.” Now, at any moment, Ibrahim may be deported back to Ghana, where the gang that attacked him is still at large. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers never delivered a piece of mail containing evidence crucial to his case, according to Ibrahim and his lawyer. They maintain that an immigration judge would not have denied Ibrahim’s asylum claim if that evidence had been delivered. Bryan D. Cox, ICE’s southern region communications director, told The Intercept that “Mr. Ibrahim was not denied access to legal correspondence” and that “while ICE is precluded from discussing specifics of [Ibrahim’s] case under agency privacy rules absent his written consent, ICE is fully compliant with the procedures outlined in its detention standards, and this allegation is not consistent with the facts.” But Ibrahim’s lawyer has motioned to reopen his asylum claim, arguing that the evidence ICE allegedly failed to deliver, which is now submitted to the court, proves “the main element” of Ibrahim’s case: His attacker is still at large.

“The whole detention system — including how they handle people’s documents and mail — is so broken, and so unconcerned with due process”

Stories like this all too common in immigration detention centers, advocates say. Even with a strong case, as well as family and community support, asylum applicants are working against the system. They are often forced to represent themselves in arduous and opaque legal proceedings, in which much is beyond the asylum-seeker’s control and subject to frequent mishandling or mistreatment by ICE or private prison contractors. “The way ICE operates is something between malicious and careless,” Detention Watch Network Policy Director Mary Small told The Intercept. “The whole detention system — including how they handle people’s documents and mail — is so broken, and so unconcerned with due process that I don’t think you can characterize incidents like this as accidental.” After he arrived in Tijuana, Ibrahim was sent to Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, the largest immigration detention facility in the country, and assigned a judge to hear his asylum claim. Like roughly 94 percent of people detained at Stewart, Ibrahim had no resources to hire a lawyer, so he had to represent himself. Discrimination against LGBT individuals in Ghana is rampant, said Frederick, a gay social and development worker in Ghana, in an interview. (The Intercept is withholding his full name for his safety.) “Challenges, such as verbal abuse and blackmail, have become almost inevitable for gay people. It’s a daily occurrence,” Frederick said. “There have been reports of physical abuse, not only in some areas considered as very religious, but also in some communities considered more hospitable to gay people.” But Ibrahim’s specific claim hinged on the fact that the leader of the gang who attacked him remained free. The gang is known as the Safety Empire, and they allegedly assault gay men after luring them into fake dates using social media. The name of the Safety Empire’s leader is redacted from Ibrahim’s interview with his asylum officer, but it’s public knowledge that the group is led by Sulley Fuseini, also known as Doya Dundu – a man who has dubbed himself “the Gay Slayer.” Nigerian pastor Jide Macaulay issued a warning about Fuseini on Facebook during the summer of 2015, along with photographs of him: This is Doya Dundu, he is based in Ghana and has promised to terrorize the gay community. He uses Facebook and other social media to track down his victims, strip them naked, assault them with sticks and leather, beat and humiliate them publicly and then post the video online. This MUST STOP. He has used words such as “we are [hunting] for gays;” he claimed that Islamic teaching objects to homosexuality; he is motivated by religious violence towards sexual minorities. Fuseini was arrested in September 2015 — about a month after Ibrahim had been beaten at his apartment — when he and his gang poured boiling hot water on one of their victims. However, he was soon let out and allowed to return to the neighborhood where the attack occurred. “I am finally [released] on bail to enjoy my freedom to continue with the good works that I had already started,” he posted to Facebook on November 28. In October 2016, Fuseini posted a picture of ammunition on his Facebook page with the caption, “I Reserve One bullet each for my haters.” Ibrahim’s family members in Ghana sent these social media posts showing that Fuseini was no longer behind bars to Stewart Detention Center, along with other evidence to support Ibrahim’s asylum claim. However, according Virginia Raymond, an attorney at the Austin nonprofit Justice for Our Neighbors who is now helping Ibrahim fight his deportation, ICE officers never gave Ibrahim the material or even notified him that it had arrived, an allegation ICE disputes. The judge denied Ibrahim’s asylum claim in August 2016 — specifically citing the fact that Fuseini had been arrested, and there was no reason to believe he had been released. The Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed Ibrahim’s appeal of the decision in January this year. “The Immigration Judge considered the respondent’s testimony that he believes that the leader … is no longer in jail,” reads the decision, “However, the Immigration Judge observed that the respondent provided no evidence that the leader … was released.” Ibrahim has since been transferred to a facility in South Texas, where his case has gained attention from immigration activists and advocacy groups in the local community. He is now represented by a human rights legal team, which is urgently trying to appeal the judge’s decision and get a new asylum hearing before he is sent back to Ghana. Raymond told The Intercept that Ibrahim is “terrified,” as deportation proceedings have begun, and he could be sent back as soon as the paperwork is finished. (Ibrahim’s main attorney, Alicia Perez, declined to be interviewed for this article.) Raymond has been working on immigration cases for years, but she said that Ibrahim’s situation still astounded her. “As used to [detention centers] as I am, ICE withholding information was shocking to me,” she said. “These can’t be called courts of law. It’s a perversion of any system of justice.”

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