Cross-posted to Big Orange.

I don’t regularly talk about my husband’s work on Calitics, but I hope you will indulge me this one time. He’s a lawyer by profession, and usually his work isn’t really all that exciting to uninvolved parties.  However, he and his law partner Ken Seeger, are now working on a case that made the cover of the San Francisco Chronicle:

Unlike most people caught up in the U.S. immigration system, John Doe Xiong, an 88-year-old Laotian who fought on the American side during the Vietnam War, doesn’t want to stay in the United States. He wants to return to his home country to die.

All he needs, he says, is his Laotian passport, which immigration officers took in April 2008 and refuse to return. Xiong is asking a federal judge in San Francisco to retrieve the document and order the government to pay damages for withholding it.

“Mr. Xiong saved the lives of American pilots at the risk of his own, and now the immigration service won’t even return his passport,” said his lawyer, Kenneth Seeger. “He is a virtual hostage.”(SF Chronicle)

The basic story here is pretty simple.  Mr Xiong, a member of the Hmong people, fought for the Americans in Laos during the Vietnam War. The American involvement in Laos was something of a secret for a long time, but history now clearly shows our actions.  Since the Americans left, he was harassed and threatened, and ultimately fled to America, leaving his wife and children in Laos. Typically such a case would be a simple asylum case, with easy approval.

However, justice is not always simple in our immigration system, even when doled out in San Francisco. The feds denied the asylum request, and demanded that he be returned to Laos.

This is where it gets interesting. Mr. Xiong, now in poor health, actually wants to return to Laos and leave the country. However, he cannot do so unless he gets his Laotian passport back from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) people. And they seem intent on keeping it and sending him home only on their timetable, and in chains.

The law on this issue seems to run against the government. The government is only allowed to take an asylum requestor’s passport to inspect, not to retain it for any extended period.

The immigration laws are a labyrinth that can ensnare even those with the most honest intentions. This is why we cannot succumb to those who seek a border only reform, we need a real overhaul of our immigration laws to provide the system with a modicum of respect for our fellow human beings.