This stateless refugee needs to be deported, but he has nowhere to go

Motaz Alhelou is a man without a country.

Born and raised in Gaza, the 30-year-old Palestinian was forced to flee his homeland after defecting and challenging the ruling militant group Hamas.

Alhelou was recruited into the group when he was 17 years old. He spent years planning his escape, but Hamas caught up with him.

In 2018, Hamas members kidnapped Alhelou, handcuffed him and put a bag over his head. They forced him to sit on a torture chair for several hours. They beat him, sometimes with a pipe, sometimes with straight fists to the chest and stomach. They called him a traitor for deserting. At one point they burned his hand. They tortured him for four consecutive days.

Alhelou fled Gaza after his release and was denied refugee status in several other countries before arriving in the United States in December 2021. The United States denied him asylum and instead held him in detention. Alhelou is stateless and no country will accept her.

Many people in the United States know about migrants and refugees in general, but they don’t know about the specific situation of stateless people living in their country. However, according to one, there are over 200,000 in America relationship published in November by the University of Chicago Law School. The real number is likely to be considerably higher, as stateless people are often invisible due to lack of documents.

This also means they cannot legally work, open bank accounts, enroll in school or higher education, receive medical treatment or visit friends and family abroad.

For people like Alhelou, being stateless can mean being arbitrarily detained in an immigration detention center, in her case with no expiration date in sight.

“The system is hard on the southern hemisphere and even more so on stateless people, because if they don’t win their asylum applications they risk long-term imprisonment while WE Immigration and Customs Enforcement They drag their feet to find another country to deport them [to]said Ramsey Judah, Alhelou’s attorney.

ICE did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

Alhelou was 14 when Hamas took control of Gaza. The militant group quickly established its own rule, including mandatory conscription. Hamas asked each family to send a male member to train with the group or face dire consequences, including death.

And so Alhelou felt he had no choice when he was forced to join Hamas in 2010. He remembered what happened to a man who refused to send his only son to the group: his body appeared on the street. weeks later. He was clearly tortured.

Alhelou was with Hamas from 2010 to 2015 and was trained as a soldier, teacher and guard. He avoided showing up to practice whenever he could, making excuses that he had to be at home. He felt helpless and constantly tried to escape.

In 2015, Alhelou negotiated with Hamas leaders to take a leave of absence so he could finish his law degree. He tried to leave for Turkey, but Hamas realized their plans and captured him. They tore up his passport and threatened him if he tried to leave again. For years, he made excuses to avoid the group. During this time, members of Hamas visited his home and questioned his family about his whereabouts.

After his kidnapping and days of torture in 2018, Alhelou knew he was not safe in Gaza and set out to find a new home.

In 2021, there were at least 4.3 million stateless people in the world, according to an official estimate by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, of whom 79% lived in just six countries: Côte d’Ivoire, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Latvia and Syria. However, UNHCR acknowledges that the actual number of stateless people globally is more likely to be around 10 million.

Migrants and refugees are at increased risk of statelessness. People fleeing conflicts may lose or be unable to carry their citizenship documents. Their children are also at risk of statelessness if they cannot prove their nationality.

Alhelou has a Palestinian passport, which he was able to replace after Hamas destroyed his previous one. However, the United States does not accept Palestinian passports as proof of citizenship or nationality, and finding a country that accepted it proved almost impossible.

He first fled to Turkey on a tourist visa, where he lived for two years, and was denied refugee status because the country’s quota had been exhausted. He started a business there and made friends. But one day in December 2020, he received a text message indicating his location in Turkey, which he said was from Hamas sympathizers. Someone broke into his apartment. Terrified, he immediately packed his bags and traveled to Bolivia, one of the few countries that kept its borders open during the pandemic and would accept Alhelou’s passport.

When his visa expired and he could no longer live in Bolivia, Alhelou traveled to Argentina. He applied for refugee status but was told it could take years for his claim to be reviewed. Mexico granted him residency but not refugee status. Feeling hopeless, Alhelou researched how to enter the United States legally, hoping to maximize his chances of gaining asylum. On December 4, 2021, he presented himself at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in San Diego, California, telling immigration officials that he was afraid to return to Palestine. Shortly thereafter, he was interviewed and given a credible and positive fear determination, meaning that an asylum official believed he had a well-founded fear of persecution in his claim for lawful asylum.

Members of the local Palestinian community in California wrote to immigration officials offering sponsorship and financial assistance and vouching for Alhelou’s character.

But the United States has denied Alhelou asylum — or any form of immigration assistance — because of his involvement with Hamas. In August, he was ordered to leave the United States

“My dreams were shattered when I entered the walls of this prison,” Alhelou said. “Or rather, when I came to America, because of this country I saw nothing but prison.”

The United States has not signed or ratified either of the two international treaties that specifically protect the rights of stateless persons: the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

However, the United States may still be bound to protect the rights of stateless persons to citizenship under other international laws, including the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that “[e]everyone has the right to a nationality” and that “[n]or one will be arbitrarily deprived of [their] nationality and was not denied the right to change [their] Nationality.”

And while the United States has acknowledged the problems facing stateless people in America, the University of Chicago report finds that none of the three branches of the US government has yet taken any action to help them.

For example, the Department of Homeland Security announced in December 2021 that it intends to formally recognize and accept a definition of statelessness, but has yet to establish any formal plan to do so.

“I haven’t seen much action to follow [DHS] commitment,” said Karina Ambartsoumian-Clough, executive director of United Statesless, an organization that advocates for stateless rights.

Ambartsoumian-Clough said her organization is working with members of Congress — which has not passed legislation to address statelessness since 1940 — to introduce the Stateless Protection Act, which would legally define a “stateless person” and provide protective status and a path to citizenship.

Alhelou said he has fully cooperated with removal proceedings and requested voluntary removal, but there are no countries to which he can be transferred.

The Israeli government, which decides whether to accept Palestinian deportees, has refused to accept Alhelou, according to his lawyer. He then asked to be deported to Brazil because of the growing Palestinian community there, but the Brazilian government under former president Jair Bolsonaro rejected that request.

“All I dreamed of was stability and no longer looking for a safe country to protect me. I was looking for a country that would guarantee me protection so that I could enjoy my right to move freely, which is guaranteed by international law as a fundamental right for every human being,” said Alhelou. “But I didn’t realize that this right was only written in the books I studied at university and would never be granted to me.”

In the detention, the conditions in Alhelou are only getting worse. In April, a psychotherapist diagnosed him with PTSD, major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder resulting from his torture. The prolonged isolation and the language barrier — he has no reading materials or people to talk to in Arabic — plunged him into depressive episodes and even suicidal thoughts, according to documents his lawyer sent to ICE.

“I was taught what war means when I was 8 years old,” Alhelou said. “I can still hear the bombs and the explosions. I haven’t forgotten them.”

Alhelou also has physical pain. He had to have two teeth removed after being placed on a waiting list for dental care and said he still needs further treatment. He went on hunger strike four times, which resulted in gastrointestinal problems.

For now, the search for a country to receive him continues. He is worried that he will be stuck in a US detention center forever.

“Everybody says that America is a country of law and justice. Where is the law and where is the justice in this? churches. “Will I spend the rest of my life in prison just for asking for asylum in your country?”