Asylum process is daunting for both sides

In a sterile waiting room in an Anaheim office building, the applicants sit on rows of black chairs beneath bright lights. Some speak in hushed voices with lawyers and interpreters. Others pace nervously as clerks behind numbered glass windows take fingerprints and photographs.

Farhad Zamani opens a secure door and calls out a number. A slender woman stands up and walks toward him, clutching a silver purse.

The door closes behind them and the woman follows Zamani down a long, empty hallway of locked doors. They arrive at his office, sparsely decorated with stacks of files, a world map and a miniature Statue of Liberty. A white legal pad and the woman’s thick file sit neatly on the desk.

She raises her hand and swears to tell the truth.

“What was the main reason you came to the United States?” he asks.

“I opposed the Chinese government’s family planning policy,” she responds.

The woman fiddles with her hands. Zamani tries to put her at ease.

“This is the worst part of my job, having you relive the unfortunate events, but I need to know,” he tells her. “Do the best you can.”

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Zamani holds the woman’s fate in his hands. If he grants her asylum, she will be allowed to stay in this country, become a U.S. citizen and bring her sons here to live with her. If he doesn’t, she will have to press her case in federal Immigration Court, a contentious and lengthy process that could end with her deportation back to China.

This is the front line of the asylum system, and Zamani is the first decision-maker. Behind closed doors, he and other asylum officers interview people from all corners of the world. They try to distinguish truth from lies. They decide if the people seated before them have endured persecution and deserve protection from the U.S. government or are simply economic refugees looking for a better life in America.

To obtain asylum, applicants must show that they are unable or unwilling to return home because of persecution or the threat of persecution based on race, religion, nationality or political affiliation.

If sent back to their home countries, applicants could be imprisoned, even killed. In the years it takes to fight a case in Immigration Court, relatives back home could suffer retaliation.

“The consequences of the wrongful decision are so huge,” said Judy London, who directs the Immigrants’ Rights Project at Public Counsel Los Angeles.

A favorable ruling from an asylum officer can be elusive. In the majority of cases, officers refer the matter to courts -- essentially a rejection. Of 11,400 applications decided by the Los Angeles asylum office in fiscal year 2008, only 19% were approved based on the initial interview. Nationwide, 31% of the 31,452 applications were granted by asylum officers.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recently allowed The Times a rare glimpse of the confidential screening process on condition that applicants agree to have a reporter present and that their identities not be revealed.

For Zamani, one of 279 asylum officers across the country, judging truthfulness comes down to specifics.

“Details, details, details,” he said. “When someone has experienced something firsthand, they are going to be able to provide a whole lot of detail.”

Zamani, 39, has been trained in the law, in understanding cultural differences and in assessing credibility. From case studies, lectures and mock interviews, he has learned to recognize signs of deception. He compares applicants’ testimony with their written accounts. He probes inconsistencies and studies their demeanor. But he is not allowed to be adversarial.

That adds a layer of difficulty in finding the truth, which is the central challenge facing asylum officers, said George Mihalko, director of the Los Angeles asylum office. “Any time you offer a benefit, people are going to try to game the system,” he said.

Officers usually spend about an hour preparing for each interview and have four days to submit a decision to their supervisor.

They are expected to complete up to 18 cases every two weeks.

“They are under enormous pressure to make difficult decisions with limited time and resources,” said Bruce Einhorn, who teaches asylum and refugee law at Pepperdine University School of Law.

Noting that officers send the majority of cases to Immigration Court, Einhorn said: “Most decisions aren’t decisions at all. They are passing the buck.”

Zamani is a refugee himself. “I know firsthand what it feels like all of a sudden to leave everybody, to leave your loved ones behind, to start new lives,” he said.

He was born in Afghanistan, the son of a government official, and had a privileged upbringing, living in spacious houses with servants. All that changed after the 1979 Soviet invasion.

One day, a 13-year-old Zamani went on an errand for his mother when Afghan soldiers -- forcibly conscripting youths to fight the mujahedin -- grabbed him off the street and threw him in the back of a truck. They released him after learning that his uncle had worked with the National Guard. But his parents worried that it could happen again and paid smugglers to guide him and his older brother out of the country.

The brothers walked for days in the mountains and desert of southern Afghanistan, dressed like nomads and carrying only a change of clothes and toothbrushes. They hid money in their underwear and lied to get through a military checkpoint. At one point, a Russian helicopter swooped down and trained its spotlight on them.

“They knew if you were leaving, you were anti-Communist,” he said. “We all prayed. . . . It was a few minutes, but it felt like eternity.”

Zamani reached Pakistan, where he spent a year living with relatives and studying English. While there, he obtained refugee status and came to the U.S. in 1984.

He attended El Camino College, managed a carpet store and did data entry for Nissan Motors Corp. before getting a job with the federal agency then known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service. In 2001, he started working at the asylum office in Anaheim, one of eight nationwide, and began hearing stories much like his own.

Zamani, now a U.S. citizen, said his background helps him judge applicants’ credibility. If he can remember details about his escape more than two decades ago, then applicants should be able to remember details from just months before.

He said he often feels sympathy but keeps his guard up. Applicants often lie.

“I don’t blame them,” he said. “I would do everything I could to raise my children here.”

The Chinese woman tells Zamani that in February 2008 she discovered she was pregnant by her boyfriend. She already had 14-year-old twin boys.

Knowing she was in violation of the country’s one-child policy, she made up an excuse to skip her required annual medical checkup. Family planning authorities called her repeatedly.

When she didn’t respond, two family planning officers showed up at her home, pushed her into a white van and took her to a hospital. There, nurses confirmed her pregnancy with blood and urine tests and cursed her as shameless. Then she was pushed onto an operating room table and nurses ordered her to remove her clothes.

“I was so scared and I trembled all over,” she tells Zamani with the help of a Mandarin interpreter. “I said, ‘I want to keep my child.’ ”

She describes the chill of metal in her body, the buzzing sound of a machine, a container at the end of a tube that filled with blood. The whole procedure lasted 15 minutes, she says. “I felt dizzy and nauseous at that time,” she recalls. “I’m sorry, officer. When I think of this tragedy my heart beats faster and I feel weak.”

Zamani pauses. “I understand,” he says. “Are you all right?”

He asks if she received any anesthetic. No, she says.

He asks where she went after the abortion. She says the family planning officers took her to a government office and ordered her to stand in the center of the room. They told her she was required to submit to regular pregnancy tests or face arrest. She says they warned her that she could face another abortion or sterilization if she became pregnant again.

The woman, who owned a clothing store in China, decided to seek refuge in the U.S. Leaving her two sons and her boyfriend behind, she entered the country on a temporary business visa and settled in one of Southern California’s Chinese communities. She hired an attorney and applied for asylum.

Zamani asks: “Are you willing to return to your country?”

With a slight quaver in her voice, she answers: “I don’t want to return to a country that killed my unborn baby.”

Zamani does not give applicants any hint as to how he will decide. He simply thanks them for their cooperation and tells them he will issue a ruling in two weeks. An applicant may give true, even heartbreaking, testimony, he said, but still not qualify for asylum under the law.

“Sometimes you hear compelling stories,” he said. “But our hands are tied.”

In the Chinese woman’s case, Zamani had researched the one-child policy and had interviewed other applicants who claimed they had been forced to have abortions. He granted asylum in some of those cases and referred others to Immigration Court, depending on whether he found the applicant believable.

“Abortions happen every minute in China,” he said. “The burden of proof is upon the applicant to show the abortion was forced.”

Zamani said he knows the power he holds. “The responsibility is pretty great,” he said. “We are talking about people’s lives.”

After the interview, Zamani reviews the woman’s responses and studies the nuances. He concludes that the description she provided -- the repeated calls by family planning officers, the lack of anesthetic and the visit to the government center immediately after the abortion -- shows she was telling the truth.

“She provided a whole lot of detail,” he says.

Zamani types up a two-page report recounting her testimony and explaining why he believed her. He prints it out, fastens it to the woman’s file and drops it into his supervisor’s box.

Asylum approved.

anna.gorman@latimes.com