Removal Proceedings – Immigration – Petition to Review

Listen to this article

7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Deng Arej v. Jeff Sessions

Case No.: 15-2061

Officials: POSNER, SYKES, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges

Focus: Removal Proceedings – Immigration – Petition to Review

The petitioner, Deng Arej, was born in South Sudan before it was an independent nation, and was sent as a child to live in the northern part of Sudan because his parents were afraid that if he remained in the south he’d be drafted into the south’s army as a child soldier. When relocated to the north he concealed both his Christian faith and his southern ethnicity to avoid being killed by northern soldiers. Later, fearing that he would be drafted into the northern army, he fled to Egypt. He was admitted to the United States as a refugee in 2005. Though a native of South Sudan, now as we said an independent nation, he remains a citizen of the Re‐ public of the Sudan. Once in the United States, Arej committed a series of as‐ saults (one in a fight that resulted in a death, although he was not convicted of murder) and was sentenced to two years in prison. In April 2014, after he completed his prison sentence, an immigration judge ordered him removed (i.e., deported) to the Republic of the Sudan. He might have preferred to be removed to South Sudan, now that it’s an independent nation, as he is of South Sudanese origin and a Christian—but the record does not say which nation he prefers: probably, as we’ll see, neither. There have been previous removals of Sudanese immigrants, but it is unclear how many of them were removed to the northern republic and how many to the southern, and how many removed to one of the two countries moved or tried to move to the other. In January 2015, awaiting removal more than eight months after having been ordered removed, Arej sought U.S. asylum on the ground that South Sudan (to which he may have intended to move from the Republic of the Sudan were he removed to that republic) was “increasingly volatile and dangerous” and by May 2014 on the brink of civil war. And as he wasn’t even a citizen of the country, he might be unable to obtain protection from its government. He may have thought it obvious that he shouldn’t be removed to the north either, in view of his vulnerability to persecution there, being Christian; in any event he was opposing, on plausible grounds, removal to either country

Petition for review granted

Full Text

Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.