Thread: Gay man fights return to Colombia

http://www.miami.com

Posted on Fri, Jan. 27, 2006


IMMIGRATION
Gay man fights return to Colombia
Fearing he'd be killed back in his homeland, a gay Colombian man has appealed a U.S. immigration judge's decision to deport him.
BY STEVE ROTHAUS
srothaus@MiamiHerald.com

An HIV-positive Colombian is fighting deportation to his native country, where he believes a paramilitary group will kill him because he is gay.

Luis Fabriciano Rico applied for asylum in late 2001, about 10 months after he came to Florida on a tourist visa.

''I cannot go back to my country. The people will kill me because I am gay and HIV-positive. I am scared,'' Rico said Thursday night from his home in Orlando. ``Let me live in the United States to save my life. Please!''

A U.S. immigration judge denied the asylum request and Rico has appealed the ruling. An appeals board decision can come at any time, said Leon Fresco, Rico's pro-bono immigration attorney.

Rico, 38, is from Barrancabermeja, Colombia, ''a city under siege'' by heavily armed paramilitary groups, according to Amnesty International.

The Colombian government historically has been unable to restrain these groups. Barrancabermeja is controlled by the right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a paramilitary army that formed in the 1980s to battle leftist rebels. The AUC, listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization, is deeply involved in the Colombian drug trade and has been known to kill pedophiles, thieves, leftist activists and labor organizers.

And also, human-rights activists say, they target gays.

Rico's lawyer, who works for Holland & Knight in Miami, said the AUC will kill ``anyone they perceive to be gay.''

''They throw rocks at your head. They kidnap and rape you,'' Fresco said.

Rico's family is in Colombia, except for a sister in Miami. He earned an accounting degree in Colombia but makes money washing dishes in Orlando, where he lives with a longtime partner.

Juan Carlos RodrÃ*guez is also Colombian, 38 and HIV-positive. He and Rico, partners since 1996, had been gay activists back home, Fresco said.

''When I lived in Colombia, they tried to kill Luis and me,'' RodrÃ*guez said. ``It's better here. We live together, free. I can walk in the streets. I can go to the movies. I can go shopping.''

When both men applied for asylum, they told church and U.S. immigration officials that they feared returning to Colombia for political reasons.

Rico later amended his asylum application to say he couldn't go back because he is gay, Fresco said.

''This is a man with post-traumatic stress disorder,'' Fresco said. ``He's not used to saying he's gay.''

At a 2003 immigration hearing in Miami, Judge Rex J. Ford chided Rico for not telling the full story from the start and then denied his asylum claim.

In his ruling, the judge also noted that Rico had ``repeatedly traveled to Colombia from the United States during the time he was allegedly being persecuted.''

Rico traveled to Colombia twice in 2001 to visit his young daughter who had been ill, Fresco said.

Nova Southeastern University law professor James D. Wilets, executive director of the school's Inter-American Center for Human Rights, recently testified on behalf of Rico.

''Mr. Rico's experience with violent threats from gang members is entirely consistent with credible reports of widespread violent anti-gay activities of gangs and paramilitary organizations,'' Wilets said in a Jan. 6 affidavit. ``What is particularly disturbing about the situation of gay individuals in Colombia is that the danger to their physical well being comes not just from societal hatred and fear of homosexuality, but from the police, military, gangs and paramilitary groups connected with the government.''

Florida congresswomen Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Pembroke Pines, and Corrine Brown, D-Orlando, also have written to the immigration appeals board, asking that it overturn Ford's decision and assign the case to a new judge.

''If removed to Colombia, Mr. Rico fears he would be subject to severe abuse, beatings, and possibly even death,'' Wasserman Schultz wrote to the board on Jan. 13. ``Therefore, I strongly urge you to reopen Mr. Rico's case and remand it to a new immigration judge.''

A different judge granted Rico's partner asylum in 2003. RodrÃ*guez hadn't amended his asylum claim to say he is gay.

There is one answer to the variety of excuses for illegal immigration...

If your country had the economic, social and political freedoms the US has, you wouldn't come to the US.

Stay in your country and fight to make it better. DON'T RUN AWAY FROM YOUR PROBLEMS AND MAKE THEM OURS.