Australia Gives Florida Man Asylum

A former state lawmaker and Miami-Dade County commissioner was granted refugee status in Australia, ending the possibility of deportation to face a civil contempt charge in the U.S.

Joe Gersten, 53, fled to Australia in 1993 after losing a reelection campaign amid a sex and drug scandal. He had sought refugee status ever since, and several Australian courts had rejected him.

“I feel as though a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders,” Gersten told the Sun Herald of Sydney, Australia. “I can get up in the mornings now without having a gut-wrenching feeling in my stomach about when they’re going to deport me.”

The Australian immigration minister who granted the visa, Philip Ruddock, could not be reached for comment.

Gersten, a Democrat, served in the Florida House of Representatives during the 1970s and in the state Senate in the 1980s before winning a county commission seat.

He lost a 1992 reelection bid after he filed a disputed police report, claiming his car was stolen from outside his home. Drug addicts and prostitutes told officers the car was stolen from outside a crack house.

A judge held Gersten in contempt for refusing to testify about the theft, and he fled the country.

Gersten has claimed he would suffer persecution if deported because he had accused onetime political enemies -- including former Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, then the state attorney for Miami-Dade County -- of corruption.

Ed Griffith, a spokesman for the current Miami-Dade County state attorney, Katherine Fernandez Rundle, said Gersten’s predictions of persecution were unfounded.