Pay the Slave Catcher (III)

A——. Born on the first day of 1993 in Al Junaynah, Darfur, Sudan–a village on the Sudan-Chad border. At the age of 10, the first Darfur Massacre of 2003 claimed the lives of his father and all his uncles. He spent the next two decades in refugee camps in N’Djamena, starving and threatened by forced conscription into the Chadian army.

About a year after he returned to his village, the second Darfur Massacre of 2023—and the military conflict that followed—killed his mother, sister, and brother. He was now the only member of his family left alive. He fled back to Chad and survived there for a year. He was pressured by Chadian authorities to join the military or leave the country. In order to make it to the US, he was forced to apply for a Chadian visa despite being a Sudanese national.

He was able to buy plane tickets from Chad to Türkiye, and then to Mexico. He arrived at the US-Mexico border in April of 2024, but because some of his documents said he was Sudanese and others Chadian, he was immediately placed into DHS detention at the Otero County Processing Center in New Mexico. A refugee escaping genocide, traumatized and orphaned, he remained in ICE custody for eight months. He was not allowed access to interpretation in the Zaghawa language, the only language in which he is fluent. He was forced to fill out an application for asylum by hand, in English, and appear in Immigration Court with no explanation as to the nature of his proceedings. He was denied asylum while in detention, placed in an Alternative to Detention program, a monitor was fastened tightly to his ankle, and he was released onto the streets of New Mexico in December of 2024.

He somehow made his way up to New York City, where I met him in March of 2025. Over the course of three or four in-person sessions with telephonic interpretation in Zaghawa, he shares with me the above experiences. He sent me photos and videos compiled by others in his village, showing the atrocities still being committed in and around Darfur today: Mothers lynched along with their children, livestock and water supplies desecrated, portraits of mass graves surrounded by heavily-armed military personnel. He shows me grainy black and white photos of his father, a small flock of sheep and goats, and a farm, through his cracked phone screen. I was in the process of assisting him with a Motion to Reopen his proceedings in Immigration Court on the grounds that he was not notified of his court proceedings when he was called into 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan for a random “ICE check-in.”

In April 2025 I received a call from an unknown Massachussetts number and heard his cracked voice on the other end, trying to communicate to me his situation in broken French. A—— had been immediately transferred from 26 Federal Plaza to Delaney Hall in New Jersey, and then to the Plymouth County ICE prison 24 hours later. After this call, I spoke to him maybe twice more, from different detention centers in Texas. By June/July 2025, his name no longer appeared on the ICE detainee locator website, and I had lost all contact with him. During his time in the US, he had relative freedom for all of about four months.

_{This individual’s identity is kept confidential out of respect for him and his family. The following images were taken from the pro se application for asylum/withholding of removal that I prepared with him.}

_{This series is part of a broader, ongoing project in collaboration with my friend and colleague, Zack Chaqor (who titled this series), in which we relay our experiences as legal professionals employed at a pro se legal clinic in NYC. Tasked with assisting newly-arrived asylum seekers—many of whom are victims of torture and other forms of severe persecution—we hope to further contribute to their struggle for self-determination and freedom by sharing their stories as they are relayed to us in our daily work, while we help them navigate the fascistic and violently oppressive immigration system of the US empire.}

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