Opinion ID: 2610
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Ali's Application for Relief from a Third Deportation

Text: In May 2004, Ali filed for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the CAT, claiming that he had experienced past torture and that he feared future torture by the Guyanese government because of his ethnicity (he is of East Indian ancestry) and the fact that he is a criminal deportee. More specifically, Ali gave the following account, which we have culled from his Application for Asylum and/or Withholding of Removal and Declaration in Support of the Petition for Convention Against Torture Protection. Upon arrival at the airport in Guyana in August 1997, uniformed Guyanese police or immigration officers arrested Ali and forced him into a dark, hot holding room. There, he was interrogated about his criminal history, handcuffed, deprived of food, and detained overnight. The next morning, Guyanese officials transferred him to another precinct where he was detained for several days, again without food, and further interrogated about his criminal record. On the first day of this detention, police officers handcuffed and beat him until he lost consciousness. On the morning of the second day, two police officers entered Ali's cell wearing masks; one raped and sodomized him. The other remarked that they did not want deportees from the U.S. in Guyana. Ali lost consciousness during the assault; he awoke to find himself chained, hanging from the jail cell bars, and bleeding from his rectum. A day or so after that incident, Guyanese authorities transferred Ali to another precinct, and during processing, he was able to escape. He went first to Berbice, and then, via speedboat, to Brazil, where he met a smuggler named Juan. With Juan's help (and in exchange for $4,000, which Ali's mother wired to Juan from New York), Ali took a boat to Guatemala, and a bus into Mexico; he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border on foot somewhere in Arizona. From there, he hitchhiked his way back to his mother's house in Queens, New York. In 1999, after he was deported to Guyana for the second time, Ali was again arrested by Guyanese authorities upon arrival. Believing that they would mistreat him, he fled from their custody. Once again, he went to Berbice, where he located Juan. With Juan's son's passport, Ali traveled to Jamaica. And in Jamaica, he obtained a Jamaican passport with a U.S. visa, which he used to board a flight from Jamaica to John F. Kennedy airport in New York City.