Andres

A father of two escapes political persecution. In search of a place where laws are followed, he came to the U.S. Read the story to see how ImmDef helped Andrés and his family obtain asylum.

Name: Andrés*

Country of Origin: Honduras 

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Andrés was born and raised in Honduras. Throughout the early part of his life, he managed to make ends meet by working long hours in laborious jobs, but as he began to build a family, he realized that hard work alone wouldn’t be enough.  

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Fed up with the tremendous adversity he faced in his country, Andrés joined a grassroots movement to demand livable wages for all Honduran citizens, and accountability from the government. The movement gained traction, people came together, and Andrés was noticed.    

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While returning from a big protest, Andrés was intercepted and dragged into a van where members of the police force beat him and threatened his life. Determined to ensure that other protestors didn’t suffer similar incidents, Andrés filed a complaint at the local prosecution office. Soon after, someone from the prosecution office warned him that the same police group had been made aware of his complaint, and that he should take his family and run for his life.  

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Andrés and his family made their way north, yearning to find a place where laws are followed, and hard work propels people forward. When he arrived at the United States border, what he found instead was an unjust immigration process. Andrés and his family were separated and put into detention, a process that many immigrants have described as extremely inhumane. 

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“I knew we had to wait and endure it [detention] because these are the laws here, and I wanted to respect them,” Andrés says. “…but when they took my children, I felt that I had come to the wrong place.” 

After about a month in detention, Andrés heard about an organization that was helping to reunify immigrant parents with their children, and he contacted them for help. ImmDef managed to successfully reunite Andrés and his children, and eventually managed to help him win his asylum. Now, Andrés two boys are working hard in school, and Andrés is doing everything in his power to ensure that they grow to be exemplary citizens.   

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To learn more about ways to join ImmDef on its mission to support immigrant communities against systemic injustice in the legal system, click here.