Dared To Oppose “Big Brother”
“To walk, move your body in space, is something marvelous,” says Alexander*. The seventh months that he was detained in an immigration detention facility in California left Lyn with the memory of the claustrophobia. “The most intense thing about that experience was realizing that something bad could be prolonged indefinitely.”
In November 2016, Alexander traveled to Cuba, then to Mexico City, and from there to Tijuana, until arriving at the border with the U.S. He explained his encounters with the Russian police, explained how they had persecuted him after he took part in protests against Vladimir Putin’s government in a campaign to monitor the elections. While they were surprised to see a Russian arrive, immigration officials let him enter, and brought him to a detention center.
The prison bars of the detention center, and a failed suicide attempt by another detainee contrasted with what he had left behind: his job as a tenured professor in Moscow University, his studies in art and philosophy. It was much more difficult to escape from the world in that prison than it was to ignore the presence of Big Brother Putin.
Alexander could have been there for a shorter time, if, after assuming the Presidency, Donald Trump hadn’t limited the number of paroles granted to detainees.
When a friend in New York finally offered to be a sponsor so he could be released from the center, the effect of months of detention had become irreversible. More than a year later, at the end of 2017, Alexander navigates the between legal procedures to obtain political asylum.
On November 30, outside 26 Federal Plaza, Alexander, together with a group of volunteers from the New Sanctuary Movment (NMS), a coalition of organizations that offer legal assistance and advocacy to undocumented immigrants and those under risk for deportation. In the last year, the activists accompany an average of 16 persons a week in court.
The group arrives at the federal building and takes the elevator to the 14th floor. Everyone prefers to avoid the 9th floor, where the ICE offices are located. Cell phones and other electronic equipment is prohibited, something that has more effect here, a city where cell phones function as a recurring source to alleviate tensions.
Alexander enters with Joan Racho-Dansen, an activist who recently joined NMS and the wait until the judge call the last three numbers of Alexander’s case, as is usually done in this court procedure. In the four hours of waiting time, Racho explains why it will be worth the wait and the importance of her accompanying him. “It’s so big what’s happening,” she says. “There are too many injustices and they can’t go out to protest in the street for every new thing: fiscal reform, immigration reform. You have to choose. Instead of going to a march, I came to the court. I do what I can.”
“There are a lot of people here. When I look around me, they all have stories. It’s not always marching, sometimes it’s sitting in a chair and wait for hours,” said Racho-Dansen.
The encounter with the judge lasted four minutes. Alexander needs to find a lawyer and return to court in 2018.
*His name has been change to protect his identity.