Story thread · 2 reports / 2 sources

It’s now nearly impossible to get asylum in Chicago immigration court

suntimes.com · 2h · first reportShare

The Venezuelan man believed his case for asylum checked all the boxes to let him stay in the United States. He had proof of how badly local police hurt him when they kidnapped and sodomized him, the nadir of months of harassment. As a gay man, he’s considered part of a protected class. And after he reported the assaults, the officers swore revenge. “They will kill me, these police officers,” he testified in Spanish in August. “They'll know when I am there” in Venezuela. “I don’t want to return.” And yet, the federal immigration judge assigned to hear his case in downtown Chicago was not convinced. Among the doubts he cited in denying the case: he couldn’t believe that the two officers piled onto a single motorcycle with their victim. He said the documents lacked crucial details, and ultimately determined that the police, though in uniform, were acting on a personal grudge rather than official actions. Judge Matthew C. Beese, a first of many hires to Chicago’s immigration court during P