Malicious Incompetence: Letters From ICE Detention
In October 2023, TFS contributor Tumen Tushinov and his wife crossed the US-Mexico border in order to claim asylum. Their journey took them from Russian-occupied Buryatia to Mongolia, to Georgia, to Turkey, and then to Mexico. After spending well over $10,000 on lawyers to apply for a “talent visa”, Tumen was rejected and was almost out of time to remain abroad. A return to Russia would mean certain danger - Tumen has marked himself as a political subversive and is involved with organizations that openly oppose the Russian government. If that wasn’t enough, the Russian government does not take kindly to its citizens running off, especially young men of fighting age who could be “better” used as cannon fodder for the war in Ukraine. Tumen’s decision to finally flee Russia had much to do with the ritual forced conscription happening in villages just like his, in Ulan-Ude.
Despite Tumen’s best efforts to follow proper procedures for a border crossing in October, he and his wife were separated and Tumen was detained in Fort Isabel, Texas. You can read the initial details here. Tumen was then transferred to the ICE detention center in Aurora, Colorado, where he has remained for the past seven months. He worked tirelessly on his appeal for asylum, and when the day finally came for a hearing before an immigration judge and a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) attorney, we felt confident we were going to fulfill every criteria for permanent residence and refugee status. What we didn’t account for - a racist, incompetent judge who had already made up her mind before hearing a single word any of us had to say. After almost eight hours across two separate hearings, Tumen’s request was denied and the judge ordered his removal from the country - deportation. Ed Gallo goes into more detail about the hearing here.
This brings us to the present, where Tumen has to make one final stand. He is able to appeal the decision and stand before the Board of Immigration Appeals, but this time we are taking no chances. Read here about the way Tumen found a reputable lawyer who validated our frustrations and freely talked about the malicious incompetence of the judge.
All that’s left is for us to wait patiently for the lawyer to work his magic, but there’s the matter of paying him. Below you will read the first of Tumen’s letters to the public, hand-written from the Aurora ICE Processing Center. PLEASE NOTE: The Fight Site is not directly profiting from these fundraisers or providing any of the funds afforded to the site to Tumen, who is obviously not a current active contributor to the site. We are simply using the platform to bring attention to Tumen’s personal fundraiser, which is located separately on Ko-Fi. The following is a transcription of Tumen’s first hand-written letter, edited by Ed Gallo. It is hopefully the first of many more to come.
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Hello, Tumen here. You may also know me as Iggy.
Well, three press releases and six-plus months later I am still detained. The show must go on, I guess.
This is an update on my asylum process as well as a general update on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) security theater circus that just never ends. Remember how I said I'm about to hit the end of the road in terms of getting asylum in the US? Yeah, whoops.
Even though we've put together an evidence package four inches thick and invited five witnesses (Ed, my wife, an anthropologist specializing in Siberia, & two representatives of Buryat organizations declared undesirable in Russia), even though I wrote something like 7,500 words for my asylum application, leaving nothing off the table, and even though everything that was presented in writing, said during oral testimony, or indicated otherwise has been declared 100% credible by both the judge and the DHS Assistant Chief Legal Adviser, I still got denied.
Why? The answer is so simple it's actually hard to believe it's true.
Did I make a mistake during my testimony and cause the court to doubt me? No, I'm 100% credible! Was my evidence out-of-date or suspect? Mind you I did put together my defense while detained with no access to the outside world, and my wife had to physically send me evidence via mail. I had to write all my written testimony by hand because GEO Group security staff don't let us use the computers in the library for more than one hour. I guess, sure, we could reasonably mess up somewhere! Alas, also no! Again, 100% credible!
Perhaps the witnesses contradicted my testimony at some point, or maybe they made statements causing the court to suspect me of making a frivolous asylum claim? Big fat no. Ed confirmed the politicized nature of my work for The Fight Site, two different representatives of two different Russian anti-war organizations confirmed my testimony and provided examples of politically-outspoken Russian citizens being persecuted, tortured and killed by the Russian government. We brought in an anthropologist from the University of Georgetown who has worked in Siberia for decades and saw firsthand the racial tensions in Russia.
So what was it?
My judge was Judy Archuleta, a former county court judge who was dismissed by her own colleagues for being so atrociously bad at her job, not even the notorious peer solidarity of judges could save her position.
My asylum hearings dragged on for nearly eight hours because my judge could not be bothered to listen to me properly or let the DHS attorney have free reign, drowning me in inane questions like, "was the shopping mall on the right or left when the alleged Neo-Nazis were about to cut off your ears?”. She dismissed the anthropologist's expert opinion because she had “an obvious bias for Buryats" and wasn't "objective" because she called the war in Ukraine, “a meatgrinder". Mind you, my attorney, whom we hired immediately after the ruling, later listened to the hearings. He pointed out in the appeal document we've sent that it was a wholly different witness who said that.
Judge Archuleta began her oral decision with the phrase: "The Respondent is very intelligent, well-spoken, and educated, which has allowed him to exercise a privilege unavailable to other asylum seekers". I mean, I'm sorry for knowing the language of the country I'm applying for asylum in, I guess?
She went on later to say, "the Respondent claims his ethnicity is treated as second-class citizens, and are considered hicks, however the Respondent is obviously educated and by his own admission, his parents are also college educated". I'm not sure if an Asian person beat her at a spelling bee but it feels like someone is taking out a grudge here.
"The incident in which the Respondent was beaten by the Russian police was not racially-motivated and was merely a case of mistaken identity, which the police have apologized for". That’s a very interesting thought process. An American judge is taking the word of a Russian cop at face value. "Being punched in the liver and kidneys does not fit the legal definition of torture." Okay? I'm sorry they didn't pluck my eyeballs out?
"The legal definitions of persecution and torture may be narrower than what a layman may believe". This was the motto of the day, and in her analysis of each incident I described, Judge Archuleta picked the narrowest definitions available. So narrow, in fact, that according to my attorney, her legal analysis is actually just nonsense. Scratch that, it’s not even legal analysis, she flat out didn't read my asylum document!
It could be worse. I could have been immediately deported.
Well, according to Archuleta, "the Respondent is so intelligent that he's been able to evade the Russian government for nearly two years in the past, and may continue to do so in the future upon return, therefore it is safe for him to return". I don’t know, maybe I am too smart for the Russian government. I’m definitely smart enough to make Archuleta hate my guts, for reasons only known to her, at least.
I guess theoretically I could avoid the Russian government, if ICE didn't return people with a big fat stamp saying "DEPORTED", and didn't notify the Russian Border Service that they're about to receive a failed asylum seeker. This of course would then prompt the Russian Federal State Security to begin looking into who I am, and...
But I guess it's no big deal. I'm smart, after all! I will just avoid all that and take years, or decades, reuniting with my wife who is not in ICE custody and is still undergoing her asylum process separately, because DHS fucking loves to rip families apart, for some reason.
I personally know people who are in detention with me, in my cell unit, whose spouses are also detained. DHS wanted to review their asylum claims separately anyway! They had to fight to get their cases unified!
Regardless, that is the gist of what my wife and I have to deal with now.
I've been thinking of writing a series. I can tell crazy stories from inside detention, but access to tablets (like the one I'm writing this on) is very limited. Other people need to use them to talk to their families, or try and get through to ICE - who are supposed to show up to talk cases every Wednesday, but don't. It's been tough to get enough time on a tablet to write. Plus, so much crazy shit happens in a day it would take thousands of words to recap even a single incident. Trust me, I know how insane the bit about the “penis mods” I mentioned breathlessly sounds to a normal person outside.
I partly wrote this to keep people who care about me appraised. I know there are people out there who wish to know what the hell is happening to us but I have no ability to keep up or get in touch with them.
But to be frank, me and my wife are in deep shit. The legal fees are $5,000, due by August, and I don't want my wife to work herself half to death. The only thing I can do for her is to write pretty English words to beg for money, so that's what I'm doing. It's the least I can do, and I owe her way more than that. So if the people reading this have any way in which you can help, please do. Every penny will help. We have to pay that amount to the attorney to write the aforementioned detailed multi-page argument to the Board of Appeals, and we need him to write it, or else I'm done for.
Thanks, and best of everything,
Tumen, out of Denver Contract Detention/Aurora ICE Processing.
