Colombian family wins U.S. asylum
Client(s) Colombian applicant for U.S. asylum
This matter was referred to Jones Day in the summer of 2003 by Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. Our client and his family - his wife and three children - fled from Colombia to the United States in late 2002 to escape political persecution. In Colombia, Client T served as an aid to a high-ranking senator who took vocal positions against the FARC, a Marxist guerilla group renown for utilizing terrorist tactics to advance its agenda. Among the FARC's tactics is to kidnap children and force them to serve as guerilla fighters. Client T worked to locate and return kidnapped children. The FARC retaliated against him by shooting bullets into his home and threatening to kill him and his family. His family relocated within Colombia and went into hiding, but were eventually found by the FARC and forced to flee to the United States.
In 2004, Jones Day filed an asylum application on Client T's behalf and represented him in an asylum interview; the application was granted on the spot. Following that success, Jones Day assisted his wife and three children obtain derivative asylum. Most recently, Michael Gurdak, Aimee DeFilippo, Kimberly Blackwell and John Bradley) helped the family obtain permanent residency status.
