Stories from HELL
GTA/News Metro Toronto From today's Toronto Star
24 Novemember 2005
More and more Iraq deserters are expected to seek sanctuary here as America's involvement in the conflict lingers, writes Christian Cotroneo.
I remember when they first ran the story on my family coming to Canada from the US as refugees. We came August 1994.
No one, NO ONE, thought we could win a refugee case here. No one.
We couldn't find a lawyer to even help us file the papers until the end of September. That lawyer, a MSW, besides being a lawyer, could NOT, would not understand that to have to take a child and flee from Britain because his perpetrator was a M16 agent, was morally repugnant. That we were persecuted people from a specific social group. She wrote to Legal Aid and told them NOT to fund our case. She said that IF my son had been abused it was ONLY once and hadn't hurt him much.
My son had been abused long and hard over a 2 year period. He was told his mother would die if he told. That to me is TORTURE.
The UK social system wanted to make "hay" out of our story. They couldn't care less what effect their publishing the story on the front pages of the newspaper would have. They wanted to justify their "jobs". Their job was to keep their jobs funded. It wasn't to help children. Bully me as they might, I wouldn't give in so they called the police to ARREST ME. Not the perpetrator. It was their job to protect my son. Under the law.
I called the US State Department who advised we go underground until we could leave Britain. The perpetrator could file for visitation, custody and make sure we never left Britain until my son was 18, 12 years away. We lived in HELL for seven days. My heart nearly stopped (for real) as we endeavoured to just pack up a few suitcases and get my son's passport renewed.
When we got to the US, we were apprehended by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and sent "upstairs" at JFK. After spending $90 and several hours of intense emotional agony, we were told to go, but to GO TO MINNESOTA. (This is a free country?)
After 2-1/2 years there something fishy developed. We realized we had been "set up". The government had set a quota on each state to deport so many "drug addicts" to make some kind of statement they were doing something. We didn't KNOW about the quota, we just knew something really insane was going on.
On the 7th of July 1994 (to make a long story short as possible), my husband was deported from the US illegally. A Federal judge colluded with the INS to make this happened. This "operation" had been planned for weeks, months, maybe a couple of years. We learned about the quota becuz I went to the press and made a BIG STINK. Nothing illegal about that. I just had TV stations and newspapers ask the INS and the Senators and Congressman involved what they thought about all this. How could an American be told who to marry and what to do when they were breaking no laws?
During the INS rampage, I was held hostage in the Bloomington INS office and told -- point blank -- that if I didn't say my husband was a drug dealer into a tape recorder, they would bring in my two sons. I cannot tell lies: I just went CRAZY. The wound today is still open. It will never close. I had eight people with guns on them TELL ME to lie. I heard my husband in another room being slammed against the wall and thought; Is this Columbia or something? One INS officer grabbed me by the arm and threw me to the floor violently. There was no way to press charges: his wife was a federal prosecutor. Do you think she would file charges against her husband? If you don't think what happened to me was TORTURE, what do you think it was?
My son had a total collapse hearing his stepfather was gone. He went catatonic and couldn't hear. So a friend lent us $5000 and by the end of July we were in Thunder Bay Canada, joined up for a weekend.
However, by the end of the weekend, the US had told the RCMP and Immigration Canada that we were drug dealers. They had been tapping our phone and knew where we were. After the Senior Immigration official and a couple of cool RCMP guys "investigated" our hotel room, my son got suicidal and REALLY sick.
Deciding he couldn't get the help he needed in Thunder Bay we worked our way across the Northern route across the Great Lakes, cleaning motel rooms for gas money. We lived in our car with a very sick 9 year old.
In Toronto, we were told by a leading immigration worker to: Go underground.
We couldn't see much sense in that. How would my son go to school? How would we get medical care when the whole system up here is socialized? We were FORCED to file for refugee status in order to eat and get a roof over our heads and see a doctor.
As I type this, I am thinking about these guys who are stepping up to their consciences and coming to Canada. You, the reader, may think, "Oh, easy for them to run away." I am telling you -- no, what they have already been through is horrific. What they are about to go through is EVEN WORSE.
I asked for support from the media and I got it in the initial stages. But it wasn't right for them to write about my son and traumatize him further. We had a NASTY hearing office assigned to our case initially who stalled our application for over one year. We had to go to the UN to complain. The Toronto Star helped us get a new lawyer.
After 2 and 1/2 years, January 1997, we finally had a real hearing (we had several skirmishes previous to this regarding giving us deportation certificates). For those of you folks that don't know, refugee court is HELL. No matter how nice the hearing room, no matter how kind they "might" try to be, it is HELL. Let that sink in, two and one half YEARS!
We won our case. For two years I worked away at proving our case. Making it air tight.
What a process -- looking at all commonwealth law, digging up US law on sedition and treason, showing how what the INS did broke state laws, getting letters of support and commendation (letters of support are necessary!), showing there was no internal flight option, keeping up with the doctors, going through PTSD flashback hospitalizations; always, always getting everything in written form.
And I will tell you; feeling completely and utterly alone most of the time. And broke. Everyone in the US sort of abandoned us. Those who filed petitions were tax audited. We were pariahs. We didn't fit into any convenient cubby hole to get help from anywhere. We made friends and were sent many angels, but inside something snapped for all three of us.
The government had 15 DAYS to appeal the decision. Behind our back, our lawyer negotiated with the BBC and other news outlets for "rights" to our story. And he signed an agreement without our knowledge that a judicial review could be done by the government. But for six months we were oblivious. We were happy. The indefinite sentence was OVER. Or so we thought.
We lost the judicial review. We lost the appeal. We were sent back to refugee court for a SECOND hearing. Only this time we were not even allowed to defend ourselves, to make our hearts and hurts heard. We knew we couldn't "win" as the two judges in our first case were fired. The Judge in the second case is now head of Amnesty International and calls America a fascist country. But he ruled against us.
The prosecutor in the case for the Canadian government felt very bad. He got sick. He sent our case to Canadian Immigration for processing for Humane/Compassionate Relief. Those claims aren't meant for outsiders. They are for Canadians to get their relatives in to bail out their businesses when they get sick and so forth. As we are considered disabled, how were we to pass a medical exam to get in?
It took 12 psychiatrists. Two doctors (one an elected representative). Help from churches. A very kind immigration consultant and Immigration Canada. It also cost somewhere in the region of $100,000 altogether to pull this off. My husband went back on drugs and was deported. He couldn't take any more after the five year mark.
We got no settlement "allowance". My son and I are basket cases. He may never be a productive citizen.
Our names and our country have been changed.
I have no passport from any country and face charges of treason and sedition if I cross the border. I started out innocent and now I am on an interpol computer base saying I am a HUGE drug dealer. I never dealt a drug in my life.
Forty nine other Americans came up here and made claims. No one but me and my son ever got landed as far as I am able to ascertain.
Our lives are meaningless unless we keep on telling our story to people who will listen. I make it my fulltime job to be a "spiritual journalist", spreading the deep dark tales no one wants to hear or listen to. I will probably NEVER have the capacity or willingness to work a "regular" job again.
These new American arrivals in Canada have my biggest prayers. I am sorry they have been sent to HELL before they got here and I am sorry about the hell they will endure whether they file refugee papers or not.
At my first hearing, I started talking about home. I thought I was so d*mned angry that I didn't WANT to go back. But that wasn't and isn't true. Something big and awesome about my Minnesota rootz has been STOLEN.
Canada still doesn't have ANY ONE in elected postion speaking out about US torture of detainees or prisoners of "war". These men (and maybe some women) are prisoners of conscience.
I am waiting.
The world is waiting.
The killing must stop.
The torture must stop.
And all prisoners of conscience need to feel like global citizens and be accorded some respect.
Pass my story on. It's only part of it. But you can see something is terribly out of whack.
I now sign myself,
A Vital Drop in
The Tide that will NOT Be Stopped
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