Drama at Mexico Border Spotlights Plight of Iraqis Seeking U.S. Asylum

The surge of Christian Iraqis across the U.S.-Mexican border at San Ysidro that began Wednesday spotlights a new and little-known pathway into the United States--as well as a growing community of families fleeing religious oppression to San Diego.

More than two dozen Iraqis trooped across the border into the hands of U.S. immigration officials Thursday, for a total of at least 77 who have turned themselves in at the San Ysidro port of entry in an apparent bid for asylum. The families were held together at a private facility under contract with the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Otay Mesa.

As U.S. officials puzzled over what to do with them, at least 130 more members of Iraq’s Chaldean minority were being confined by Mexican authorities to a dingy Tijuana hotel that in recent months has become a way station for the asylum-seekers.

Officials of the United States and Mexico were holding talks, and human rights observers from the United Nations showed up at the hotel to take statements from those inside. The human rights ombudsman for the state of Baja California said Mexican authorities were considering offering asylum if the United States refuses to.

A growing flow of Iraqis applying for asylum at San Ysidro since the beginning of the year, though modest in size, was apparently enough to create delays that left Iraqis languishing for months in Tijuana--setting the stage for this week’s drama.

In the last two months, 128 adults and 44 children from Iraq have sought asylum at San Ysidro, said Robert Looney, director of the INS asylum office in Anaheim. The total during the same period last year was zero, he said.

In San Diego County, where arrivals of Iraqis over the last 40 years have swelled the ranks of Chaldeans to at least 15,000, activists said Iraqis have been quietly shuttled through Tijuana during the last six to eight months. They said that after emigres were granted entrance to the United States earlier this year, word spread halfway around the world.

There are various ways to apply for asylum, but doing so from a country next door offers a key advantage: Applicants who don’t enter the United States until asylum is granted are not subject to detention while their case is considered, INS officials said.

“They heard that everybody’s coming to Tijuana. It was easy, but now it’s hard,” said Ferial Shamma, who lives in San Diego and was helping the newest arrivals in Tijuana fill out forms and translating interviews with U.S. immigration officials.

As the weeks of waiting continued, emigres living in the United States have toted staples such as rice and sugar to friends and loved ones across the border. They have offered advice and legal help. One U.S. resident even set up an office at the hotel, complete with computer and printer, to help new arrivals complete their applications.

But the Iraqis reported shakedowns from men in Mexican police uniforms in recent weeks. One such raid was said to have frightened the first group of Iraqis into abandoning prior plans and turning themselves in to U.S. officials at the border.

Those left behind held a hunger strike, prayed and mulled the ill luck that, so near the end of a hopscotching route across the globe, had deposited them in a cheerless hotel named Suites Royal. Trapped in the glare of an international immigration spectacle, they knew they were maddeningly close to a community of loved ones just across the border.

For Khairi Estefan and his family, who sold their Baghdad home and endured an itinerary of menial jobs and heartless smugglers as they passed through Jordan, Albania, Greece and finally Mexico, being held bore a special cruelty: They had been due to pick up documents granting them permission to enter the United States today.

“We don’t know what our life is going to be. Are we going to be here? Deported?” asked Estefan’s 38-year-old wife, Nahla, from her fourth-floor window. “I feel like I’m in jail.”

Her brother, El Cajon auto parts salesman Amar Jacobs, waited on the sidewalk outside and related the winding journey his relatives, economically beset in Iraq by the U.S. embargo, had traced to Tijuana.

Estefan, an ailing former electrician, Nahla and their son, now 20, sold everything and were sneaked across Iraq’s border into Jordan six years ago. From there they were smuggled to Albania, where they were harassed by police and the son was severely beaten by robbers, Jacobs said.

Another smuggler escorted them on foot into Greece, where, lacking documents, mother and son took on the lowest of jobs, washing cars, arranging flowers, cleaning produce bins. They lived in a hovel in Athens, scraping together the $30,000 they would pay to be smuggled, using Greek passports, to Mexico City three months ago and then quickly to Tijuana.

A planned welcoming celebration with relatives in San Diego now is in doubt.

“We’re stuck,” Khairi Estefan shouted from the hotel window, “in a political circle.”

Efforts by the Iraqis drew an instant outpouring of support from San Diego County’s Chaldean community and from several local politicians. Rep. Bob Filner (D-San Diego) wrote to Mexican Ambassador Jesus F. Reyes-Heroles to ask that the Chaldeans at the hotel be allowed to stay in Mexico while U.S. officials evaluate their pleas for asylum.

INS officials said that the acceptance rate for Iraqis seeking asylum is one of the highest of any groups because of the long history of human rights abuses by Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein.

“This is not a regime that looks kindly on opinions that differ from the prevailing opinions put out by the ruling class,” said Looney, the INS asylum official. For those Iraqis whose bids for asylum must be heard by an INS court, the presence of a large and welcoming community nearby increases their chances of being released on bond during the proceedings, which can take weeks.

On Thursday, the INS released without bond two women, one of whom is pregnant, and a child on humanitarian grounds, allowing them to stay in San Diego until their cases are processed.

San Diego County has the second-largest Chaldean community in the United States, behind the Detroit area. There are an estimated 120,000 Chaldeans in the United States.

Beginning in the 1950s, Chaldeans began settling in Detroit to work on assembly lines in the auto industry. Some later worked at grocery and liquor stores and gradually become owners.

Migration to San Diego, accelerated by the Persian Gulf War, followed a similar pattern. Chaldeans now own about 900 local businesses, mostly small grocery and liquor stores. Community leaders also have plans for a Chaldean school system in San Diego to help preserve the group’s customs and Aramaic language.

The Chaldean community is centered in El Cajon, La Mesa and Spring Valley, all suburbs east of San Diego.

“We are an American success story and very proud of it,” said Arkan Somo, executive director of the San Diego Merchants Assn., a group for Chaldean business owners. “We are people who have come here for a second chance and we never forget that.”

Chaldeans share similar doctrines with the Roman Catholic Church but have different customs and a different church hierarchy. In San Diego the Chaldeans and the Roman Catholics have shared a strong bond.

On Thursday, Vice Chancellor Rodrigo Valdivia, the third-ranking official with the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, sent a message to the diocese in Tijuana asking it to make whatever “intervention is possible” to assist the Chaldeans being detained by Mexican authorities.

Chaldeans in San Diego County have contributed to local political candidates and worked in their campaigns. Several local officeholders have Chaldean staffers. One local politician, San Diego City Councilman Juan Vargas, answered a plea taped to a hotel window--”Juan Vargas, We Need Your Help”--by appearing outside. He had spent much of the day making calls on behalf of the detainees.

“They only want to work hard and keep their families together,” Vargas said. “They are just the kind of immigrants we need to keep the American miracle going.”

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Ellingwood reported from Tijuana and Perry from San Diego.

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Pipeline From Iraq

An informal channel for members of Iraq’s Chaldean minority seeking political asylum in San Diego has sprung up over the last year. Individually and in small family groups, they work their way west by a variety of routes, often stopping to work for a time along the way.