By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--December 3, 2013
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While living in the U.S. illegally, she got married and raised a family. She worked at various restaurants in the kitchen. And teachers praised her as a good mother who had a positive influence on her children’s performance in school. But despite her appeal for asylum, an immigration judge denied her request, concluding her testimony about fearing prostitution and crime lacked credibility. And even if it was credible, the judge held, she wasn’t entitled to asylum because “young, attractive women are not a social group for asylum.” In 2008, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision. Precetaj, meanwhile, was under supervision by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Having lost her asylum case, she was placed on a tether and ordered to report once a month to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office on Mt. Elliott in Detroit. She knew deportation was ordered. She just didn’t know when. On Monday, she got the news. She came home and told her husband, who emigrated from Yugoslavia 40 years ago. The couple pulled the kids out of school and broke the news to them. The children broke down crying. She started packing her bags, and the kids’, too. She plans to live with her elderly parents in a village in Albania. “She’s got no choice. She can’t leave them,” said her husband, who is a cook at a coney island in Detroit and said he can’t afford to raise the children on his own.I bet you didn't know that "young, attractive women" were deemed unworthy of asylum, but that's apparently the way the U.S. justice system views things. By the way, her case is Cile Precetaj v. Eric Holder Jr., just in case you want to look it up. I am not saying Precetaj did nothing wrong by entering the country illegally. Obviously she did. But unlike your typical illegal alien who flees across the Mexican border and hides out, Precetaj tried to do everything she could to establish legal residence once she was here. Now her three American children are being forced to move to a small village in Albania where they will be separated from their father and live with their elderly grandparents. Do you seriously mean to tell me the federal government couldn't find a better way than this to resolve this situation?
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