Thread: Chinese mother smuggled to Fort Lauderdale seeks asylum base

Chinese mother smuggled to Fort Lauderdale seeks asylum based on "one-child" policy
southflorida.sun-sentinel.com
By Jay Weaver, The Miami Herald
7:52 a.m. EDT, August 17, 2011

A Chinese mother who was threatened with sterilization under China's "one-child" policy may be allowed to stay in the United States, now that federal prosecutors have decided to drop a passport-fraud charge filed after her arrival on a cruise ship in Fort Lauderdale.

The U.S. attorney's office last week dismissed an indictment against Zuo Mei Ke and another Chinese woman, Feng Zhao, who is claiming religious persecution. Both women are now seeking asylum.

They sneaked out of China with four men using false Japanese passports to travel through Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and finally to South Florida.

However, none of them could fool U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents when they arrived as passengers on the cruise ship at Port Everglades in late April, with documents showing fake Japanese names and dates of birth.

Prosecutors dismissed the passport-fraud cases without explanation against Ke, 24, and Zhao, 21, who sought asylum while being questioned by authorities on the MS Amsterdam.

"The government dropped the charge because it was the right thing to do," Ke's attorney, Richard Docobo, said Tuesday. "Zuo Mei Ke was subject to forced sterilization. If she had remained in China, they would have made her life so difficult."

In 1996, Congress passed a law that benefits asylum seekers such as Ke. It specifically grants asylum to people who can show they face forced abortion, forced sterilization or population control.

More than 10,000 asylum claims are filed by Chinese nationals every year, immigration records show.

"The majority of asylum claims from China are for forced abortion and forced sterilization," said Ira Kurzban, a Miami attorney and expert on immigration law. "Most of the claims are centered around New York and the West Coast, but there are cases all over the country, including some in South Florida."

Ke and Zhao, the other woman, are being held at the Miami Federal Detention Center.

"Feng Zhao was being persecuted for practicing Christianity in her homeland," said her attorney, Jordan Lewin. "She was a victim of physical violence."

Four Chinese men who also made the long journey with the women have pleaded guilty to passport violations, served short sentences at the federal detention center and now face deportation.

Though the one-count indictment against the women was dismissed, they will likely be transferred as undocumented immigrants to the Krome Detention Center while their asylum petitions are heard by U.S. authorities.

Ke's journey to the United States was particularly poignant because she had left her two young children in the Fujian Province in the southeastern coast of China to reunite with her husband, Zhong Shi, who had fled two years earlier to join relatives in Houston. He, too, sought asylum.

According to her attorney, Ke's ordeal began in 2007 when she and her husband had their first baby, a girl. Chinese officials started visiting their home, ordering her to go to the closest government clinic and have an intrauterine device inserted for birth control under China's one-child policy.

The rule officially restricts most married couples to having only one child, although it allows certain exemptions. Adopted in 1978, it was created by the Chinese government to alleviate social, economic, and environmental problems -- but it has also generated controversy.

In Ke's case, Chinese officials ordered her to revisit the government clinic every three months for check-ups to verify that she still had the IUD, her attorney, Docobo, said. But because the birth-control device caused her so much pain, Ke went to a private doctor to have it temporarily removed. She then had the doctor reinsert it when she had to visit the government clinic for another inspection.

By early 2009, however, Ke was pregnant again.

Chinese officials came looking for Ke at her mother-in-law's house because she had stopped visiting the government clinic, Docobo said. As she tried to flee through the back door, she fell and started to bleed, going into premature labor. An ambulance took her to the hospital, where she gave birth to her second child, a boy.

The hospital's doctors and nurses tried forcing her to sign a document authorizing them to sterilize her after she gave birth -- but she refused.

Over the next two years, Chinese officials searched for Ke and her family, who moved from house to house. During this period, her husband fled from China to Cuba to Mexico. He was stopped trying to enter the United States at the Texas border, but eventually was reunited with relatives in Houston.

Meanwhile, Ke made arrangements for her children to stay in China as she planned to flee with the five others in the smuggling operation through Asia and Europe to South Florida.

If she obtains asylum as her husband recently did, the couple hope to bring their children to the United States.

Under immigration law, most asylum claims require proof of persecution. But under one provision, applicants must only prove that they have been victims of "coercive family practices,'' Docobo said, citing the 1996 law.

"Forced sterilization is an assault on the human body," he said.

His client "is a courageous woman," he added. "She should be welcomed into this country with open arms."

http://southflorida.sun-sentinel.com/ne ... 6871.story

If Chinese citizens need asylum based on Chinese government is physically violent towards these people, then we should be refusing to trade with China.

Get busy Congress, and get Americans back to work. China needs to be dealt with like Iran, no trade.

"However, none of them could fool U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents when they arrived as passengers on the cruise ship at Port Everglades in late April, with documents showing fake Japanese names and dates of birth. "

Gee I wonder why?

Couldn't Formosa handle these people?

Building a fifth column here perhaps?

They sneaked out of China with four men using false Japanese passports to travel through Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and finally to South Florida.

So they couldn't get asylum in Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain or Portugal?

They didn't have to come to America for asylum. We must stop rewarding bad behavior. Believe me I could make up one heck of an unverifiable story. China doesn't take their citizens back (repatriate), if we catch them here illegally.

Dixie