Columbus – The Columbus Dispatch published a deeply-reported article about racial bias and ignorance in the Cleveland Immigration Court, with examples from Black Mauritanians.
“If you’ve ever observed judges’ comments and actions in immigration court, it’s clear they are coming from a Western, Christian, white privilege perspective,” said Lynn Tramonte, Director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. “Black Muslim men who were tortured — and saw family members murdered — are simply not going to break down sobbing in open court. But they are still experiencing pain, more pain that most of us will ever know. And the way judges treat them is appalling.
“Even when people stand up in court and demand the right to show their scars to prove their experiences, they are denied. The humiliation, degradation, and accusations of fraud and deception that Immigration Judges visit upon Black immigrants every day just reads as racism. More people need to know.”
The article quotes a Columbus man who survived torture, and has a case pending in the Cleveland Immigration Court:
“I live with uncertainty, which is torture inside of me because I’m living a life where I’m not sure if I will be granted asylum or be deported. If I go back [to Mauritania], the same thing that happened to me will happen again…. My roommates went through this [immigration court]. I’m scared.”
The Cleveland court denies more cases than the national average—88% vs. 63% in 2021, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). For Mauritanians in Ohio, the denial rate was lower than that of other nationalities, but still horrifically high. From 2002 to 2022, according to the Dispatch, 713 Mauritanians appeared in the Cleveland court to fight deportation. Four hundred forty-three people were denied.
Racism and ignorance can creep into court various ways. Judges are empowered to deny asylum if they find someone’s testimony “not credible,” and seem to look for any reason to do so. Scars on Black people’s bodies are questioned. Details of their tortures — such as whether they were burned first and then beaten, or beaten and then burned — are labeled “inconsistencies.” Government attorneys often advance a fraud narrative that is both offensive and incorrect, and judges often follow.
This is not the first time the Cleveland immigration court has come under scrutiny for bias and misogynoir. In a prior article, attorney Emmanuel Olawale described how Judge Jonathan Owens questioned his client’s understanding of her rapists’ motivations. She was raped because she is a member of the English-speaking minority in Cameroon. Judge Owens posited that perhaps she was raped because she was a “pretty virgin.” He denied her asylum.
Said Olawale, “If someone’s a ‘pretty virgin,’ is that a good reason for them to rape her in any context? That statement is misogynistic and very shocking to me.”
But the problems are not isolated to Cleveland’s court. Black Mauritanians of Fulani ethnicity have been provided interpreters speaking the wrong dialect in both Cleveland and New York. This makes it impossible for them to communicate adequately. Judges accused them of deliberately struggling with interpreters to stall their cases, showing that they view people who come before them as prospective liars first, rather than prospective refugees.
When a judge concludes that fleeing violence in a “little boat” is inconsistent with prior testimony that the method of transportation was a “canoe,” and the details are relayed through an interpreter, it’s clear that judges are looking for reasons to deport the people appearing before them, rather than protecting them.
Said Tramonte, “There are fundamental changes needed to remove bias from immigration laws and the court system itself. Researchers at the Ohio Immigrant Alliance are writing recommendations on that now. In the meantime, the Biden administration must designate Temporary Protected Status for Mauritania. These refugees did not get a fair shake in court, and deportation would send them back to torture. TPS for Mauritania has bipartisan backing from Senator Brown and Rep. Carey. When will the Biden administration take this step and end the anguish for Black Mauritanians?”
Read: “’Guilty until proven innocent’? Advocates say Black immigrants face racial bias in court,” Columbus Dispatch. Go behind the paywall here.