ARRESTED, JAILED, and SEXUALLY ASSAULTED IN ETHIOPIA, SHE FLED TO THE U.S. where she was detained and abused all over again. That is the story Zena Asfaw will tell a hearing chaired by California Democrat Zoe Lofgren, called to investigate problems with immigration detainee medical care.
Asfaw will tell Congress that she was arrested by Ethiopian government forces following the May 2005 elections. She was accused of being part of the opposition because there were messages on her cell phone from friends who strongly opposed the government. Held for 12 days, SHE WAS BEATEN AND SEXUALLY ASSAULTED, and even though she was eventually released, she feared for her life when police began rounding up and throwing people in jail after new riots broke out a few months later. It was then that she fled, traveling through 17 countries in 13 months to reach the United States where she applied for asylum.
Immigration officials welcomed her to the U.S. with a trip to jail.
There, while a judge pondered whether she deserved asylum, she got very sick and a nurse gave her seven pills to take. When Zena Asfaw questioned the nurse, the nurse became very angry and instructed the guards to check her mouth to make sure she swallowed each and every one of them. “Immediately my body started shaking…” Within minutes she suffered a SEIZURE, and fell off the bed. Other detainees yelled for the guards who took her to the detention center medical unit where she was given four more pills. Later that day she would VOMIT VIOLENTLY, BLEED FROM THE MOUTH and FAINT before finally being taken to a hospital.
Zena Asfaw was lucky. She survived BOTH a jail in Ethiopia and an ICE DETENTION CENTER IN THE U.S. Five months later, she got her asylum.
By Tom Shine, Politics As Usual, ABC News