Help Free Teenaged Asylum Seeker!

We are seeking your help to free Noe* from ICE detention.  Noe is an 18-year-old young man from Central America who presented himself at the border seeking asylum as an unaccompanied child.  He came fleeing extreme poverty, child labor, and threats and violence at the hands of gangs, including severe beatings, as punishment for resistance to their attempts to force him to join.  His resistance to their lifestyle was deeply rooted in his Noe faith.  In his home country, Noe faced three choices: join, die, or flee.  He chose flight.

Noe 's case is just one more example of the current Administration's draconian and inhumane immigration policies.  Despite never having broken any law or committing any crime, Noe has been detained for over 7 months, at first in juvenile immigration detention.  On his eighteenth birthday, for the crime of turning 18, he was shackled and transferred to a prison-like adult detention facility, where he has remained ever since.   With the help of his pro bono representative through Immigrant Defenders Law Center, he was able to obtain a bond of $8,000.  However, an indigent, teenaged asylum seeker, he cannot pay that amount.

He has no family in the United States but has built bonds with members of his faith community in his time in the U.S. He also has the support of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice.  We are asking the community to please pitch in to help get Noe freed.

When he is released he will get to live with his sponsor, a pastor living in California. He will get the opportunity to continue his education and fight his case.  He will be able to access counseling to overcome his history of trauma, and most importantly, he will be free.

*We’re using a pseudonym to protect his identity