The University of California Press has just published Asylum Denied: A Refugee’s
Struggle for Safety in America, by David Ngaruri Kenney, a former client of
the Center for
Applied Legal Studies (Georgetown’s
political asylum clinic) and his lawyer, Georgetown University Law Professor Philip
G. Schrag, the clinic’s director.
The book explores U.S.immigration law and its
administration (particularly but not exclusively) asylum adjudication, through
Kenney’s first-person narration of his Kafkaesque encounters with the entire
panoply of American immigration bureaucracies and courts. Kenney was a poor farmer in Kenya who led a boycott to protest
certain agricultural policies of the country’s strongman President, Daniel arap Moi. For this act of defiance, Kenney was nearly
executed, tortured, and imprisoned. After an amazing escape to the United
States, he applied for asylum, but his application was
rejected at every level, and he was finally forced to return to Africa, where he was once again nearly murdered.
Some comments from prominent readers:
"Asylum Denied is riveting and essential reading
for anyone interested in the lives and struggles of immigrants. Kenney's story
will astonish, frustrate, and inspire you."–Dave
Eggers, author of What is the What
"This is a fabulous book-a love story, a law story, a struggle against
death, a battle for justice, and much more. I urge you to read it."–Bruce Ackerman, Yale University
"Asylum Denied is at once a page-turner, a penetrating critique of
the U.S.
asylum system, and an exquisite exploration of humanity and politics, of
emotion and law, of tension and release. It has the same narrative power that
distinguished Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action."–Hiroshi
Motomura, University of North Carolina
"In Asylum Denied, David Kenney and Philip Schrag bring us a deeper understanding of the
vagaries of our asylum process by telling David's riveting story. What society
wouldn't be enriched by such stoic, courageous and principled strivers as
Kenney? The more we learn of the lives and yearnings of such people, the closer
we will be to an asylum process worthy of our values."–Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman, Senate
Judiciary Committee
Publisher’s Weekly (March 24, 2008): Astonishing in its power to move and inform,
this fluent first-person narrative, a collaboration between a young Kenyan
political refugee, Kenney, and his stalwart American attorney, Schrag, depicts
the flaws and corruption at the heart of the U.S. asylum process. Kenney fled Kenya in 1995 after being arrested and nearly
executed for leading a peaceful protest against the government's treatment of
his fellow tea farmers; he survived torture and escaped to
America where he was plunged into
an incomprehensible and hostile immigration system. Kenney and Schrag's
dealings with the Department of Homeland Security and federal immigration
courts reveal a system that is "disquietingly random." Applicants are
victims of "refugee roulette," their fates largely dependent on the
sympathies of the government officials who hear their cases. Schrag's recommendations to make the system more consistent and compassionate give the
book-and Kenney's heartbreaking story-an added sense of purpose and real
practical potential. Kenya's recent political implosion lends this book added
topical relevance, but its core concerns for justice and reform remain directed
at American society, especially (though not only) its byzantine asylum system.
The book is available in book stores and on Amazon.com.
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