Hope Karekezi is used to getting death threats. She's used to people stalking her home and living in fear. She came to America to breathe freely. But now, she could be deported to the country she desperately tried to escape.
Karekezi, 46, migrated to the United States from South Africa in 2007 with her 85-year-old mother and three children to seek asylum. On Aug. 2, the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency will review the family's asylum claim. There's a chance they could be deported soon after.
Karekezi's father-in-law had been a soldier in the Rwandan army in the 1990s, a time when mass genocide swept the nation. Radical South Africans seeking revenge for those attacks targeted Karekezi's family because of her husband's connection to the military.
"I had known about the genocide revenge stories before, but I had no idea that the whole situation would follow us," Karekezi told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "Without intervention by a higher authority on our behalf, I fear that we could be delivered to our deaths."
ICE declined to comment on the family's case without written consent from Karekezi's eldest son Andy, who is being detained by ICE and could not be reached. Andy was arrested because of theft charges which were eventually dropped. He was kept in detention, and Karekezi said on Tuesday ICE told her he would be deported.
Atlantans from a number of immigration organizations, including Dream Activist, have stood in support of the Karekezi family. The group supports the hotly debated federal DREAM Act, which offers citizen status to children born in the United States of illegal immigrant parents.
Mohammed Abdollahi, 25, a youth organizer for Dream Activist, helped put together a community gathering at St. Paul's Presbyterian Church in downtown Atlanta, where the Karekezi family attends service. About 30 residents showed up to the rally Monday night. An online petition in support of the family has gained more than 5,000 signatures.
"Just like any system, there are things that slip through the cracks," Abdollahi said. "Not to pass judgment on the whole system being flawed, but these people should be judged on a case-by-case basis. They have a very compelling story and a very real threat."
Rev. Timothy McDonald III, a pastor and longtime civil-rights activist who has been speaking out against immigration crackdowns in Atlanta, spoke at the rally as Malcolm Mathe, 19, Karekezi's younger son, stood by his side. McDonald likened the family's situation to the ongoing immigration struggle primarily affecting the country's Latino population. Foreigners seeking asylum, he said, are in the same boat.
"All men are created equal," McDonald said. "The Statue of Liberty with its torch -- 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free' -- what happened to that? Now we're sending people back to be shot."
There are tens of thousands of immigrants in the United States with similar stories, according to federal immigration data. Federal immigration officials have increased their efforts to weed out truthful stories from fabricated ones, as President Obama has added new judges to hear immigration cases.
In a higher profile case that gained worldwide attention, it was revealed that a West African hotel housekeeper who accused former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault had lied on her asylum application. With cases like these circulating through U.S. courts daily, it's a task for lawyers to know what is legitimate.
Karekezi's family had no physical indications of the harm they claimed to face in South Africa, making their case less powerful in a court system. And Atlanta judges have a track record of declining more asylum cases than the national average, according to court data.
"We have educated them, we have made them a part of our society," he said. "We have made them Americans in every sense other than a certificate. Why would we deport our own?"
Karekezi still has hope.
"I feel like I can scream and shout my loudest and no one can hear me," Karekezi said. "But together we can make a difference."
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