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.