Immigration Judge to Asylum Seeker: You Don't Look Gay

[marmar]

from Mother Jones:



Lest you are having some nostalgia for the Bush administration as the midterm elections approach, here's a good example of yet another way that administration's legacy is still screwing up people's lives.

Last week, the 11th Circuit court of appeals reversed a truly dreadful decision by a federal immigration judge installed during the heyday of Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, who helped turn the Board of Immigration Appeals into a dumping ground for unqualified political hacks who couldn't get confirmed to other federal courts. The case involves a Serbian immigrant who was seeking asylum in the US on the grounds that he was persecuted in Serbia for being gay. Mladen Zeljko Todorovic came to the US in 2000 as an employee of a cruise ship and ended up staying here to avoid anti-gay persecution back in Serbia, where he claimed to have been raped while in the military and harassed by the police.

He applied for asylum, which was ultimately denied for a variety of technical reasons. But during Todorovic's removal hearing, Miami immigration judge Carey R. Holliday said Todorovic's claims of persecution were "highly suspect" because Todorovic simply didn't look gay. Apparently Holliday thought that unless Todorovic was wearing a dress, there was no way the police or military thugs would have known to single him out for abuse. According to the 11th circuit opinion, Holliday said during the hearing:

The Court studied the demeanor of this individual very carefully throughout his testimony in Court today, and this gentleman does not appear to be overtly gay...it is not readily apparent to a person who would see this gentleman for the first time that, that is the case, since he bears no effeminate traits or any other trait that would mark him as a homosexual.

............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/10/bush-immigration-judge-gay-asylum-seeker