AP: Honduran man waits for asylum after 12-year fight (was a scared 10-year-old when he got here)

[Omaha Steve]

http://news.yahoo.com/honduran-man-waits-asylum-12-fight-140446610--politics.html




Celvyn Mejia Romero prepares to respond to a question last Sunday during an interview as his mother Susana Romero looks on at the Greater Boston Legal Services in Boston. Twelve years after arriving to the U.S. from Honduras, Mejia Romero is still fighting to stay in America.
Associated Press


By BY SHARON COHEN 4 hours ago

When he arrived at the Texas border, Celvyn Mejia Romero was a scared 10-year-old, with a machete scar and memories of a murdered uncle as reminders of why he'd embarked on a long, perilous journey from Honduras.

He feared staying in his homeland and desperately wanted to join his mother in the U.S. In July 2002, he and two cousins — 6 and 14 — ended up near Brownsville after traveling by train, bus and foot. He remembers his grandmother, who lived in Arimis, Honduras, preparing to send him away, handing him a bag of food, some water and telling him: "'Get on the bus. Don't look back. ... Don't come and hug me. Don't say goodbye.'"

"That," he now says, "made me cry.'"

Twelve years later, Mejla Romero is still fighting to stay in America. His tenacious — and unusually long — bid for asylum offers a singular glimpse into the complex world of immigration law and rules that many legal experts say are fiendishly difficult for anyone, especially kids, to negotiate. And yet at 22, Mejia Romero, who has lived longer in the U.S. than in his native Honduras, is hoping he'll prevail.

"I think if I win this case ... all my nightmares would end because I'd know I'm not going back there," he said in an interview from his lawyers' office in Boston. "I'd feel like I'm free. ... I would feel happy, happy, happy. It would be the best day of my life."

FULL story at link.

[Louisiana1976]

1. I hope he wins his case for asylum. It would be terrible if he was deported back to Honduras.