Questions asked of an activist from Iraq [part 3 December 2021]

I know I asked you this three hours ago [it is now 3:09 pm]

but, what was your job in 2011? how did you get hired there?

why did you depart from that job?

[why is Immigration Court so different from asylum office?]

Where did you work in May 2005? [sixteen years ago]

[is it in the training of asylum officers, that they should wear down each applicant until at least three inconsistencies are found? Deny the applicant lunch, make him sit there for five hours, and then during the sixth hour, repeat questions from the second hour?]

What did you say about yourself in your DS-160?

[It is my job to drag inconsistencies out of you. We have all the time in the world; what is six hours and 30 minutes, if I can discover an inconsistency that I can show to my boss?]

It is now 3:27 pm. Let's talk about 2011_ ten years ago. Where did you work?

Did you begin work in December 2009 or was it July 2009? Why are you inconsistent?

I will ask you again: was it in December or July of 2009?

It is now 3:40 pm. I will ask you the same question I asked you at 3:15 pm: when did you begin to work at that office?

In 2005, [16 years ago] you were a member of which organizations?

in 2011, weren't there other protests?

what was the government concerned about in 2013?

Brother #1: he worked for what company in 2014?

are you a member of any organizations today?

Tell me about all of your international travel? [why don't Assistant Chief Counsels ask this?]

Have you ever been accused of crime?

did you ever give "material support" to an organization that you think was a good organization?

did you ever recruit anyone to join a "terrorist organization"?

Is there anything else? Yes? what?

It is now 4: 36 pm. We are done!

[this interview was scheduled to begin at 9:30 am. It did begin at 10:30.   A six-hour interview, with one break of 15 minutes]

 Activist from Iraq [part 2]

who beat you up? what clothes were they wearing? what did they say? what language did they speak? did they rob you?

can you remember one bad guy in particular? he was tall/short? fat/thin/muscular? beard? glasses? expression on his face?

how did they beat you? using what weapons? hit you where?

any blood come out? you did not go to doctor? why not?

you did not report this to police? why not?

what did you see with your eyes? what did you hear with your ears? did you smell anything? what did other people tell you?

there was a protest ten years ago? April 2011? what day in April?

What was the protest about?

How did you organize the protest? what did you do?

who protested? students? faculty? why did they protest?

Did any of the protestors throw rocks or shoot guns? Did they advocate violence? were they "terrorists" according to definitions of US Congress?

do you have any photos of your scars?

do you have a letter of corroboration from a friend who was with you, at the protest?

did you suffer any other physical harm?

did you suffer any other threats?

In May 2006, there was a protest? where were you, when you were threatened? where were you standing or sitting?

October 2005 is 16 years ago? YES. What was your address?

OK, this in new information. We must change page 4 of the I-589 that asks for this

It is now 1 05 pm. Let's take a 15 minute break. I am allowed to eat food and drink coffee, but you are not.

    [during the break, I saw children sleeping on the floor. The Immigration Court waives the presence of kids; why not the asylum office?]

You say you were beaten by government agents in 2015. Did you complain to the police? why not?

Were you a member of an organization? do you have a membership card?  Your card says you joined in 2014, but really you joined in 2015?

in 2005, [sixteen years ago] were you a member of an organization? 

in 2009, you were at a new job. What month did you begin there? During that year, were you a member of an organization?

[why do asylum officers do extensive background checks, which are not done for cases in Immigration Court?]

your sister was beaten up by government agents? did she report that to the police? why not?

did sister go to the doctor? why not?

did you criticize your government while you were in your country? did you criticize them here in USA? if you return to your country, will you continue to criticize?

While living here in USA, did you receive any threats?

Why isn't each member of your family dead?

you do not trust the police in Region #1, where you were. So, why not tell police in a different region?

Woudn't you be safe if you lived in Region #3? #4?

did anything bad happen to similarly-situated persons?

you were last harmed six years ago: they have forgotten about you, haven't they?

 Questions asked of an activist from Iraq [December 2021]

Who came with you, today, to this interview?

did you file I-539?

who prepared I-589? how was it prepared?

did you read the final version

did you have any help in writing your declaration?

Does your declaration describe ALL of the harms you suffered?

does it describe all harms in the past? all harms in the future?

Show me your passport! can you give me a copy of every page of your passport? when and how was it issued? did you attempt to re-new it? why not?

is this your only passport?

What is your grandfather's first name?

your father's name?

tell me all of your addresses for the past ten years!

where did you live in 2005? [sixteen years ago]

three years ago, you lived at this address in Virginia for just three months? why was that?

on this page, you say you started a job in June 2013; but today you say it was in September 2013? why the difference?

tell me the place of birth of your mother/father/ brother #1/ brother #2/ sister #1

brother #1 now lives in France? what is his immigration status there?

sister #1 now lives in England? what is her immigration status there?

where did you work in 2009? [12 years ago] Did you begin to work there in the month of March, or was it July? why are you inconsistent?

Why did you leave your country?

There was a protest in June 2016? what day in June?

what are the political parties in Iraq?

you protested in February 2011? [ten years ago] Where did you protest?

Did you organize the protests?

were you a member of an organization? [this was asked 4x during the interview]

did an organization organize the protest?

How did you express  your political opinion? where did you talk to people? on the street? inside restaurants? on college campus?

did you write letters to influential people? did you phone them or send emails or texts?

did you post on Facebook or on Twitter? did you print out any examples of what you posted?

did the Government read your posts? how do you know if they did or didn't?

  Questions asked of an activist from Senegal [October 2021]

How was your asylum application prepared?

You passed out pamphlets? what did the pamphlets say?

Did you try to recruit members to join the MFDC? is that group a "terrorist organization" according to the United States?

What is the process of joining? Fill out an application? supply references? pay money? have an interview?

Did your wife depart from the country you say is dangerous, and then return, voluntarily, there? She is not afraid of future harm, is she?

Your wife did not receive any threats? Your older brother lives there now, in peace?

What was your immigration status when you were in France?

The police in one city were angry at you? So, why not go live in City #2, or # 3? No one would find you in the far-away city, would they?

What other relatives now live safely in your country?

You say your government is angry at you, because you protested in USA? Do you know anyone who protested in USA, and then returned to the [dangerous] country, and got arrested?

Do you know of any "similarly-situated" people?

 

Questions asked of an activist from Senegal [Nov. 2021]

Does the most recent Department of State Report say that now there is a cease fire?

Does the third paragraph of that report give a good summary of your country? 

Why didn't you highlight portions, using a yellow magic marker?

Did www.globalsecurity.org publish a good recent report?

Did the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals accurately describe your political party, in N'Diaye v. Barr, [2019]? 

Did the Intelligence Resource Program publish an accurate article at www.irp.fas.org/world/para/mfdc?

Did www.France24.com publish an accurate article about your country?

 August 27, 2021 ASYLUM OFFICER QUESTIONS 

၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်ဇူလိုင်လ DRC မှတက်ကြွလှုပ်ရှားသူတစ် ဦး ၏ Arlington Asylum ရုံး၌ မေးမြန်းသော မေးခွန်းများ (သို့) ဖြည့်စွက်ထားသောမေးခွန်းများ

Interview ဠ် ဖြေဆိုခဲ့မှုပေါ်မူတည်၍ မေးမြန်းသူအရာရှိ၏ စိတ်ခံစားချက်ဖြစ်ပေါ်နိုင်မှုများပါ၀င်ဖော်ပြထားသည်။ [The possible expressions of the asylum officer at the interview were written depending on the answers given by the applicant]

 Interview ကြာချိန် (Duration of the Interview): 5 hours

-ယူအက်စ်ရဲ့စည်းမျဉ်းတွေအရမင်းနာမည်ဘယ်လိုခေါ်လဲ။

-I-589 အတွက်ဘယ်သူကကူညီပေးခဲ့လဲ။ မင်းအဲဒီလူကိုဘယ်လိုတွေ့တာလဲ။

-သူကမင်းကိုဘယ်လိုကူညီခဲ့တာလဲ။ မင်းရဲ့စတိတ်မန့်ကိုဘယ်လိုရေးခဲ့ကြလဲ။

-လူတစ်ယောက်ထဲကပဲ မင်းကိုကူညီခဲ့တာလား။

-မင်းရဲ့မိခင်ဘာသာစကားနဲ့မင်းကိုပြန်ဖတ်ပြခဲ့လား။

-Form I-589 ကို မတင်ခင် မင်းဖတ်ကြဖူးသလား။

-အဲ့မှာအမှား‌တွေပါ တာကို အဲ့အချိန်တုန်းက သင်ပြုပြင်ရန်အလွန်အလုပ်များနေခဲ့တာလား။ ဒါဆိုအခုမှမင်းငါ့ရဲ့အချိန်နဲ့မင်းအချိန်တွေကိုဖြုန်းတီးပြီးအခုပြင်ပေးမှာလား။

ဤအရာသည်ပင်ပန်းသောအလုပ်ဖြစ်သည်။ ဒါပေမယ့်မင်းခုလုပ်ခိုင်းတဲ့အတွက် ငါနဲနဲစိတ်အနှောင့်အယှက်ဖြစ်လာပြီ။

မင်းရဲ့ I-589 Form မှာမင်း ခံစားခဲ့ရတဲ့ ခြိမ်းခြောက်မှုများနှင့်အန္တရာယ်များအားလုံးပါလား။

လှည့်ကွက်မေးခွန်းတစ်ခု -ဟုတ်ပါတယ်။ 

ဒါပေမယ့်မင်းကမပါဘူးပြောရင်အရာရှိကဘာကြောင့်မပါတာလဲလို့မေးလိမ့်မယ်။  ခြိမ်းခြောက်မှုတွေ၊ ထိခိုက်မှုတွေအားလုံးပါ ပါတယ်ပြောရင်၊ မင်းရဲ့အဖြေကကိုယ့်ကိုကိုယ်ကန့်သတ်နေတယ်။ ဖြစ်နိုင်သည်မှာအောက်ပါအတိုင်းအဖြေဖြစ်နိုင်သည်။ ”

 Questions asked by Asylum Officer of an activist from China:

Tell me about all of your international travel!

Give me a photocopy of every page of your passport, including the blank pages!

Tell me about the international travel of each member of your family!

You say your government hates you, and wants to  imprison you? Really? When you wanted to depart from your country, you went to the airport, and showed them your passport with your name in it, but you were not arrested? why not?

Do you know your own history, perfectly? 

You departed from your country five years ago? your government has forgotten about you, correct?

You say you have a strong anti-government political opinion? How did the government find out that you had that opinion?

You say you are an activist who was imprisoned. Do you personally know anyone else, similar to you?

  May 2021: questions asked of a pro-democracy activist by Asylum Officer:

Did anyone help you prepare your application? how was it prepared? did someone read the entirre application back to you in your native language?

Are you aware of the contents of your application? is everything in it true?

How did you meet your lawyer? How many times did you meet with him?

Can you repeat page one of Form I-589 without looking at it? Let's see:

what is your name? use any other names? address? phone number? POB? DOB?

ethnic group? religion? 

When did you last leave your country? when did you last enter the USA?

Tell me your complete travel history!

Can you repeat pages 2-3 of Form I-589? Let's see: name and date of birth of spouse?

name and date of birth of each child? Tell me the international travel of each member of your family!

= = 

Can you repeat page 4 of your application? Let's see:

your last address in your country? you lived there from when to when?

tell me all of your addresses in USA, and all addresses for past ten years

Tell me all your education

tell me all your employments? Where do you work today?

tell me the name of your father/ your mother/ each sibling

Why are you seeking asylum? Who do you fear?

after two hours of questions, the officer asked, "Is there anything else?" Yes? what?

 HOW TO PREPARE YOUR ASYLUM CASE [August 2021]

-Some suggestions from a lawyer who has seen many applicants get denied by mean asylum officers

1. Be chronological: know your own life history, perfectly.

    Get  your passport; hold it in your hand. When was it issued?

Look at each stamp: where were you, on each date? Use this as an outline for your case: I was born on July 4, 1990; my first passport was issued on 5 May 2006 is a way to start.

2. Prepare a chart of all of your international travel. Asylum Officers are trained to focus on this information.

3. How did you get your US visa? First, you, or your friend, sat at a computer, and filled out Form DS-160? On that form, did you say you were not arrested?

      Second, you had a face-to-face interview, at the US Embassy? You told them some lies?

4. Did you suffer physical harm? Describe it, by month/year/city

5. Did anyone threaten you with harm? Describe it, by month/year/city

6. What did you see with your eyes? what did you hear with your ears? what thoughts went through your mind?

7. How did you spend your last 90 days in your country? How come you were not arrested?

8. As you departed from your country, how  come you were not arrested at the airport?

9. Describe your life in the USA: you are a person of strong political and religious beliefs? How do you express yourself here in the USA?

10. How was your Form I-589 prepared?

11. You have lived in the USA for a long time; your government has forgotten about you? Have you done anything, here in the USA, to bring yourself to the attention of your goverment?

 4.QUESTIONS ASKED OR IMPLIED:  JULY 2021 at the Arlington Asylum Office of an activist from the DRC [July 2021]what is your name, according to rules in the United States?who helped you do the I-589? how did you meet that person? how did he help you? what was the process for writing your written statement? did just one person help you? was it read back to you in your native language?

did you read Form I-589 before mailing it in?

It contains lots of errors; you were too busy to make corrections at that time; so now you are going to waste my time [and your own time] and make the corrections now?

  -this is a dull task; but you are making me do it? So, I am a little annoyed at you, right now?

=

Does your I-589 contain all of the threats and harm you suffered?

   -a trick question: of course, it does not. But if you say it does not, the officer will ask why it doesn’t. If you say, yes it does contain all the threats and harm,  you are limiting yourself. Perhaps answer as follows: “

did you suffer any threats, not in the I-589? 

did you suffer any harm, not in the I-589?

  [why did the officer ask this question twice? to trick or trap you? YES]

what is your complete immigration history?

    let’s start back in your country, when you applied for a visa: 

     Who answered the questions on the visa application? you? someone else?

       you forgot what the questions were? you have not read it, recently? But the asylum officer read it yesterday? So, he knows more about you, than you do?

  DS-160 is available in French? DS-160 asks if you have ever been arrested? and you answered no? you lied on the Visa application? The officer thinks you lied? So, if you lied on that, perhaps you lied on another application, I-589?

Give me your original passport, so I can hold it in my hand.

I want to know about every stamp in it. I believe the passport knows more about you, than you do.  And by the way, you agree with that, don’t you? You can’t remember all of your travels, but the passport knows?

   You applied for a visa to France ten years ago, and you were denied? Why?

Let’s see if you can repeat everything on Form I-589, without looking at it.

If your oral statements today, disagree with what you wrote, then we will spend several minutes on that. I will ask you: “why are there errors in the 589? you told me there were no errors in it; but there are?  So, instead of talking about your being tortured in prison, and being threatened, we will talk about your addresses and travel from six years ago.

 STILL MORE QUESTIONS OF THE DRC ACTIVIST

3.And, after you make me do the dull task of forcing you to tell me your history, I will be tired and annoyed. When we finally get to your torture in prison, I will be tired, and not so interested.

You departed from your country in June 2016? for each of the sixty months before that, where did you sleep at night? where did you work?what was your last address in your country? this means, where did you sleep at night, not where you received mail.= = =

Tell me all of your international travel. Tell me your employment history, for the past 15 years.

    Why is the info on the visa application different? why did you say on that application that no one helped you? do you even know the visa application process? If you don’t know, why do you pretend that you do?

Have you noticed, by the way, that we have now spent 60 minutes on your history, and zero minutes on torture in prison? Are you getting tired? I am more tired than you are aren’t I?

To get your visa, they asked you oral questions, face-to-face? And also, they asked you written questions, which you or someone else answered? 

In your visa application, in writing, it says you worked for the Sinther Company?

 Why does it say that? If you have not read your application in the last five years, but I read it yesterday, I have an advantage?

   can you get a copy of your visa application using a FOIA request sent to the Department of State?

your father knows you were in prison? so, how come he did not write a letter of support for you?

Tell me in one sentence: why did you apply for asylum?

Did you suffer any physical harm? tell me!

Were you ever threatened?

when you suffered physical harm, when he was hitting you, did he also threaten you?

where were you, at the moment of your arrest?how many other people were with you why were you protesting? were people chanting things? like what? what happened, the day or week before, that triggered the protest? did anyone see you get arrested? why didn’t that person write a letter of support?

were there protests before, and also after, elections? why?

What words did the officer say to you?

 MORE QUESTIONS ASKED OF DRC ACTIVIST 

2.what weapons did he have? where on your body, did he hit you?

The police took you where? what happened upon arrival?

what kind of uniforms did they wear

how were you transported from the place of arrest to the building?

were you harmed before arrival at the building?

you were detained how long

what happened on the day of your release? what did the guard say to you?

After that, when was the next time you were harmed?

did you do any political activities in the last ten years?were you a member of any groups?how did people know how and when to show up for a protest?

Mr. Smith invited you to join the party? how did you meet him? what did he tell you?

what was the process, for you to join the party?

Tell me all of your international travel!

What does each stamp in your passport mean? does your passport know more about your travels than you do?

did you ever depart, and then return, to your country that you say is “dangerous”?

Did you even read the letters of support you gave to me? Do they have inconsistencies?

WHY DID YOU GIVE ME EVIDENCE TO CONTRADICT YOURSELF?

Can you read your own documents? do I, the officer, know more about your documents than you do? Is that embarrassing? [Do I think you are stupid? YES]

Are you guessing? Are you embarrassed to say “I don’t know”?

At the moment of your arrest, where were you? what did you see? what did you hear? what did you feel?

   I was inside my living room; I saw two officers; they were shouting; my legs hurt when they hit me with batons

They took you where? how did you get there?

upon arrival, what kind of room did they put you in? who else was there?

how long were you detained?

what thoughts went through your mind on the evening of the first day?

What happened on the day of your release?where did you go next? how did you get there?what happened at the hospital? did they do any tests? did they put bandages on? what was your health condition the hour before your arrived at the hospital? how long at the hospital? what was your condition upon release? WHY ARE THE HOSPITAL RECORDS IN FRONT OF ME? DID YOU EVEN TRY TO GET THE RECORDS? DID YOU SPEND AS LONG AS 15 MINUTES, BEGGING YOUR MOTHER?

how did your family know where you were?

QUESTIONS ASKED OF A DRC ACTIVIST

 why not flee immediately from this terrible country? what did you do the last 30 days in your country?where did you sleep? why weren’t you arrested? any problems as you departed from your country at the airport? they were happy to see you go? they did not care what you did?if no arrest as you departed from the airport, why would you be arrested upon return?

let’s look at your passport again. Please explain every stamp.

Why did France deny you a visa?

is there anything else?

do the police know the address of your parents?

If you return, what would happen to you?

Why would the government want to harm you now, several years after you departed?

Your government has forgotten about you?

Have you done anything here in USA to bring yourself to the attention of your government?

Did you join any groups here in USA? why not?

Your original application was written in English, but you can’t read English?

so, the officer, who can read English, will know much more about your application than you will?

Your application says “I was taken from my apartment to a dark room.” But today, you told me you were taken from the apartment, to a big office, and then to a dark room?

your government is still angry at you? 

Felix Tshi...is the head of the DRC? Kabila is no longer important?

You are a member of the UDPS? in 2021, did other members of the UDPS suffer harm?

Why would you suffer harm?

Members of your own family live there, and have not been harmed? so, why not go live with them?

Who would target you? a specific person? a group?

Are there any other reasons you would suffer harm?

ever been offered legal status in another country?

ever get weapons training?

were you ever a member of any group? is that group a “terrorist organization”?

did you ever give MATERAL SUPPORT to a Terror organization?  {“TO”]

-did you ever help a TO?   even under duress, ever give assistance to a TO?

even under duress, ever give MATERIAL SUPPORT to a TO?

do you have any questions for me?