At an immigration court in Pearsall, Texas, in front of a judge, government attorneys and a court interpreter, ES shakily recounted the darkest moments of his life.
He explained how he had been arrested seven years ago in Turkey, amid his government’s crackdown on followers of Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen. The police officers who detained him accused him of being involved in a terrorist movement, and demanded he reveal the names of his associates, he said.
When he refused, he told the judge, the officers brutally beat him with a stick and raped him. “The first time they did it, I passed out,” he said.
The officers made him smell something to revive him, he told the judge, and then proceeded to torture him again. They did so, over and over, for three days. That was only the beginning.
“In the events that followed my whole life went upside-down,” said ES, whom the Guardian is identifying by his initials to protect his safety and the safety of his family.
ES told the court he served 25 months in prison, and continued to be abused and denied access to medical treatment. He was told to strip naked for the guards, and was beaten if he did not comply fast enough.
Once he was released, he tried for a while to piece his life back together. His wife – who worked for the government – had filed for divorce, fearing that she would become implicated by association. He struggled to find ways to keep seeing his children – twins who were quickly growing up in his absence. He found he had been blacklisted in his industry, and couldn’t find work. So he moved in with his parents, and took up a job delivering milk.
Nearly three years later, authorities charged him again, saying he had been spotted speaking to known Gülenists.
“I understood that I was not safe, my life was not safe there, so I had to leave,” he told the court.
Minutes after ES finished his testimony, the immigration judge, Veronica Marie Segovia, told him she would be denying his request for asylum.
His attorneys were flabbergasted. It was one of the strongest asylum cases they had ever seen in their careers.
The Guardian analyzed 25 years of asylum application decisions across the US, and found that Segovia grants asylum at an exceptionally low rate.
Since she was appointed as a judge in November 2023, Segovia denied more than 100 asylum applications, and granted asylum in a single case. It is one of the lowest rates among the more than 800 judges who have presided over more than 100 asylum applications.
Using data from the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), the department of justice agency that interprets and administers federal immigration laws, the Guardian analyzed cases where immigration judges could either grant or deny asylum, excluding cases that were withdrawn or otherwise concluded before a judge could reach a final decision. On average, judges granted 38% of asylum applications, the analysis showed. Some judges, like Segovia, granted asylum in less than 5 or 10%.
An earlier analysis by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse found two judges who denied 100% of cases they heard between 2019 and 2024.
Immigration judges, who are appointed by the US attorney general, can wield incredible power over asylum seekers’ fate. Those who are denied asylum by judges have narrow options to appeal against their cases, and few are able to afford legal fees to cover the lengthy process.
But a November 2024 analysis by legal researchers of asylum cases published in the Boston College Law Review found that immigration judge decisions often “bore little resemblance to what we have come to expect in a reasoned judicial ruling”, and that they “frequently rested on factual and legal errors, poor legal analysis, and/or express illustrations of bias”. In an examination of more than 500 immigration judge decisions, the authors found examples of speculation, overt bias against applicants or “vague or incomprehensible analysis” of laws and policies.
Researchers found that judges who have previously worked in immigration enforcement – including as attorneys for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) – had higher denial rates, and that male judges tended to deny asylum at greater rates overall than women.
Immigration judges are meant to be impartial interpreters of the law. But administrations tend to promote and appoint judges who reflect certain biases – the first Trump administration, for example, filled the ranks of the immigration courts with judges who, as a whole, have disproportionately ordered deportation, according to a Reuters analysis.
“There’s no way to justify this as being fair when you have such an extreme difference in outcomes for asylum seekers, based not on anything about the law, but based on the background of the judge,” said Karen Musalo, a founding director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies and the Refugee and Human Rights Clinic at UC Law San Francisco, and one of the authors of the review.
Lawyers told the Guardian they try to keep track of which judges and courts have the highest denial rates, and try – when they can – to move their clients’ cases to more favorable venues.
“It’s quite glaringly obvious that there’s a huge range in discretion in adjudicating cases,” said Ruby Powers, a Texas-based immigration attorney.
Segovia had previously served as an assistant chief counsel with the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in San Antonio. She had also served as assistant district attorney in Bexar county, Texas, and privately practiced criminal defense law.
The Guardian was unable to reach Segovia via email or phone numbers that were publicly listed. A spokesperson for the EOIR, Kathryn Mattingly, said the agency “does not comment on third-party reporting of EOIR data”.
“Asylum cases typically include complex legal and factual issues, and each case is unique with its own set of facts, supporting evidence, and circumstances that may affect the outcome of the case,” Mattingly said in a statement. “Immigration judges consider all evidence and arguments that the parties present and make determinations and issue decisions in accordance with US immigration laws, regulations, and precedent decisions.”
ES had no idea about the judge’s background before he appeared before her in court, recounting to her the memories he had tried to bury in the deepest part of his brain. When he first heard her decision, he wondered if he was misunderstanding due to the language barrier. “I thought it was a dream. I thought it was a nightmare,” he said. “I thought, ‘I’m going to wake up. I’m going to wake up.’”
His lawyers were struggling to understand the decision as well. The DHS had filed a letter saying the agency did not oppose granting ES asylum, writing that it was of the opinion that he “has established his eligibility for the requested relief and that it should be granted as a matter of discretion”.
Segovia was unconvinced. She said that while the rape and torture ES endured was terrible, “the court does not find that this was based upon or motivated by his political opinion”. His treatment, she continued, “was based on the fact that they identified the respondent as part of a terrorist organization that they were attempting to bring forward for prosecution and possibly imprisonment for the attempted coup that led to much bloodshed in Turkey”.
To ES and his lawyers, the decision seemed to fully ignore the geopolitical context of his situation.
In Turkey, the Gülen movement had attracted legions of followers who were drawn to Fethullah Gülen’s Sufi-inspired vision of Islam, and its emphasis on charity and education. “It represented Islam in a way that is far from radical,” said ES, who started to attend meetings alongside his friends and family, and eventually began volunteering time to fundraise for the movement’s educational and social aid programs in Africa.
The movement’s founder, however, was a complicated figure. He had fled Turkey after the country’s old secular elite accused him of trying to overthrow the state in 1999, and he sought refuge in Pennsylvania, where he lived in self-imposed exile until his death last year. For a while, he was a close ally of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, until the two had a falling out.
When a faction of the Turkish military coordinated a coup in 2016, Erdoğan assiduously blamed Gülen, though details of the coup and Gülenists’ involvement remain unclear. Gülen denied any connection to the coup attempt, and the US declined to extradite the cleric to Turkey. Still, Erdoğan declared the Gülenist movement a terrorist organization, and immediately instituted a purge of its followers – which international observers including the US have said resulted in massive human rights violations. Thousands of teachers, academics, government officials and journalists were among the Turkish citizens arrested – often based on vague, arbitrary charges.
The US state department has said that it does not consider the Gülen movement a terrorist group.
“I have never held a weapon in my life,” ES said. “I did not take part in an organization to hurt anyone in my life.”
And yet it felt as if the judge was saying he deserved the way he was treated by Turkish authorities, he said. She had conceded that the rape and beatings were bad, but had said his treatment therafter was “not as bad” – suggesting that what he experienced wasn’t quite torture. “She made it seem like a very light event,” he said.
And she told him his imprisonment amounted to “lawful sanctions” for crimes.
ES said he still doesn’t understand what exactly Turkish authorities had accused him of doing. The first time he was arrested and accused of being part of a terrorist movement, the evidence authorities pointed at was the money he’d been raising for the Gülen movement’s charity programs.
ES’s lawyers have appealed his case. But his path to asylum now is exceedingly narrow.
Members of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) are often promoted from the ranks of the immigration courts, and some have records of rejecting most of the asylum applications they reviewed. In 2020, the American Immigration Council filed a lawsuit seeking information about hiring procedures for BIA members after reports that judges with skewed denial rates were being promoted.
Last month, Law360 reported that the EOIR moved to reduce the number of BIA members from 28 to 15. Among those dismissed are nine members appointed by the Biden administration. The EOIR declined to confirm or deny whether BIA judges had been let go.
Attorneys and advocates worry that an implicit threat of being removed could pressure the remaining BIA members to take harsher stances on asylum cases. After George W Bush’s attorney general John Ashcroft enacted a purge of the BIA in 2002, the board’s decisions dramatically shifted. “We started to see restricted decision-making happening not just in asylum but across all immigration petitions,” said Blaine Bookey, legal director at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at University of California College of Law, San Francisco. “We’re now seeing that threat again.”
If appealing to the BIA doesn’t work, ES and his team could appeal to the federal court. In rare cases, asylum issues are escalated to the supreme court. But the appeals process could take years. Most asylum seekers are unable to afford to pay the legal fees required to keep fighting for their cases. For many who are in detention, the prospect of remaining – indefinitely – in custody while the courts hear their cases is too much.
Still, ES remains hopeful. “The ruling that the judge made does not bring down my faith in the US justice system. I still believe that American justice will correct this mistake,” he said.
ES’s brother, who had also been arrested and detained on similar charges, went to Germany, where he has since gained asylum. But ES said he thought he’d have a better chance of finding safety in the US.
When he left Turkey, he told no one, slipping out in the middle of the night. Because Turkey had canceled his passport, he had to slip out through his country’s border with Greece, eventually making his way through Europe and then Mexico.
In August 2024, he arrived at the US border, and used the CBP One app to make an appointment to claim asylum. “I want to make clear that I entered the US legally,” he said. “Without breaking any laws.”
He has been in detention ever since.
He’s able to occasionally speak with his twins on video call – though he cannot bring himself to tell them where he is or what has happened to him. “I’ve told them I’m in an immersive educational program of some sort,” he said. He’s pretty sure they don’t believe him – they’re teenagers now, and old enough to know better. Eventually, when he can see them in person, he’ll sit them down and explain everything. “This will hurt their hearts,” he said. “I want to be in physical proximity enough to hug them when it hurts.”
In past months, he has rarely gotten a full night’s sleep. He has felt uneasy around people in a uniform ever since he was first arrested. “It doesn’t have to be the police. It could be a security guard in the mall,” he said. Now he’s constantly surrounded by uniformed officers, including those who stand guard through the night in the dorm of about 100 people where he is being held.
On the days when the officer on the night shift is a man, he feels especially panicked – and his mind flashes back to the two policemen who abused him. “I know that the same thing will not happen here, because there’s cameras everywhere, it’s monitored. But this fear does not hesitate to penetrate me,” he said. He paces around the dorms, though the night, for four or five hours, until his body begins to feel so weak he is physically unable to remain awake. It’s only when the guards are women that he’s able to rest a bit.
A psychologist he saw while in custody suggested sleeping pills, but he declined the prescription. He didn’t want to be unconscious, and lose his vigilance. Some day soon, he hopes, he’ll be able to rest – alone – in a bed and a room that’s all his own.
And he wants to kiss the twins, once on each of their cheeks, “just how they like”.
