His story became known only after he managed, in a second effort, to fly into Newark Airport in New Jersey, where he got through expedited removal and was able to apply for asylum. The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights raised his case this October in a report identifying several instances in which asylum seekers reported being wrongly turned away. But because the INS limits outsiders from seeing the inspection process, no one knows how often such instances occur. One expert who has been denied access is Karen Musalo, a resident scholar at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, who has been studying expedited removal for three years. In June 1999, staff members from Senate and House immigration subcommittees did have an opportunity to see the secure inspection area at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.
Many refugees say they are haunted by the inspection process long afterward.
With her sister translating, the woman said she fainted while chained to the bench. A man from Zaire, in an interview, described breaking down and crying from fear, after inspectors at Logan Airport in Boston told him that he was being sent home. The officials relented, he said, only when they realized his pants were soaked in blood from wounds caused by torture. He has since won asylum. An airport inspector had unchained the man from a bench, hours after he arrived, and led him to a bathroom where he took his money and sexually molested him.