In the days before his immigration hearing, a long, yellow serpent paid nightly visits to Mario Escobar’s bedside, trying to swallow him. Each time, as it got closer, the serpent became a helicopter.

The images of war were visiting Escobar in his sleep as pesadillas, the nightmare scars of a child of war. They were the helicopters that flew over the capital during the final rebel offensive, Escobar’s final day in the sea of dead, charred corpses that marked the grounds of El Salvador’s civil war.

Nearly 18 years after fleeing his homeland, Escobar, 29, sits on a porch in Westwood, trying to repair a small, lime-green monster truck for his 6-year-old son, Mario. Had it not been for a Los Angeles judge’s decision nearly eight months ago, Escobar realizes he would be back in El Salvador, not here fixing toys for his U.S.-born child.

He realizes, lately even more, that he is one of the lucky ones.

Escobar is one of a small number of Salvadorans granted political asylum in the United States. Of the 7,161 applications received from El Salvador last year, only 95 were granted, according to U.S. Department of Justice statistics.

Over 1000 were denied.

Escobar’s case is different. His asylum application was a defensive measure, filed in response to an order of deportation entered against him. But like other asylum-seekers, he faced detention, representation problems and endless waiting before an emotional day in a California courtroom determined whether he would stay in the United States or be forced to leave.

Like many others fleeing conflict zones, he and his mother, Maria, crossed the border illegally.

“'That’s it, we’re leaving,’” Escobar remembers his mother telling him on Nov. 11, 1989. “'We’re taking off; I’m taking you with me. I don’t know if we’re going to make it alive, but it really doesn’t matter because if we stay here, we’re going to get killed.’”

Escobar and his mother lived in a constant state of violence. Before he revisits it, Escobar asks his son, diligently watching the progress of his monster truck, to go inside and watch cartoons. “Love you!” Escobar calls out, seconds before little Mario pulls the sliding-glass door shut behind him.

“Something so abnormal became so normal,” Escobar said, a doorway now safely between his son and his own memories. “Just looking at neighbors being dragged out by the military, ladies being shot in front of us. That was my world.”

In 1986, Escobar’s father, Angel Evaristo Escobar, was one of the victims, a murder his son suspects stemmed from Angel’s involvement with fishermen’s unions, targeted as leftist organizations by El Salvador’s authoritarian government.

His mother, too, was “like a ghost; in and out” of the house where Escobar stayed with his grandfather. Two days after one of her visits, Escobar tried and failed to follow her. “I left, but I couldn’t find mom,” said Escobar. “So what other alternative I had was to join the revolution at the age of 11.”

Photographs from Escobar’s time with leftist guerillas show him crouching, a wide-brimmed hat atop a skinny, 11-year-old frame. “Like any other kid holding an M16,” Escobar says, describing his time as a soldier in the revolution.

It took months for his grandparents to find him after paramilitaries captured Escobar in the aftermath of an ambush, but it took only a day after reuniting with his family for his mother to decide that fleeing El Salvador’s bloody war in the middle of the night was their only hope.
With little time to prepare, arranging entrance and exit visas was nearly impossible. Such is the case for many asylum-seekers who enter the U.S.

“The reality is that the person who has the strongest claim to asylum, the person who’s in the greatest danger in their home country, those are individuals who are basically fleeing with the clothes on their backs from their country,” said Niels W. Frenzen, director of the Immigration Clinic at the USC Gould School of Law.

“They’re not able to do planning; they’re not able to get visas,” he said.

Time isn’t the only constraint, according to Ana Deutsch, clinical director of the Los Angeles-based Program for Torture Victims and Escobar’s mentor. “The U.S. doesn’t give visas easily,” she said.

Yet immigrating to the United States illegally will not invalidate asylum-seekers’ legal claims. “For people that ask for asylum, meaning they are escaping a situation, it’s not considered fraud,” said Deutsch. “But they have to have a coherent explanation for the judge to understand. There has to be a reason why this person was not able to get a visa.”

After arriving in the United States illegally, Escobar and his mother were arrested in San Isidro by officers of U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services, now called Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Right away we were placed in jail, and my 12th birthday, I was in jail with my mom,” said Escobar.

Though they were given an appointment for an immigration hearing, Escobar’s mother never showed up. Had they entered illegally more recently, the two would have been interviewed by the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services arm.

“We make the interview, we make the call,” said immigration services spokesman Christopher Bentley. Homeland Security officers arrange for translators when necessary, and if an asylum-seeker’s request is not initially approved, the non-citizen has the right to a hearing and further recourse through the Board of Immigration Appeals, overseen by the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review.

“There is no standard set of questions that we promote,” Bentley said of the initial interview. “You don’t necessarily want individuals to be able to rehearse their answer to fool the system.”

People who are not initially approved for asylum and file for appeals are placed in detention. “There are no documents in play because the exact identity of the individual cannot be ascertained,” Bentley said.

Escobar and his mother settled in Los Angeles after missing their initial immigration hearing, but they weren’t tracked by INS or ICE, which uses its resources to find only certain categories of illegal immigrants, according to Frenzen. “As a practical matter, ICE doesn’t have any way of finding you,” he said.

Though immigration law requires applicants to file for asylum within one year of arriving in the United States, Escobar was able to have his case re-opened nearly 15 years later. “He was a minor,” said Deutsch.

Escobar said his mother, a 26-year-old woman at the time of the first hearing, was too scared to attend. “She was afraid they were going to deport us back to that repressive country,” said Escobar. “She decided not to go.”

Yet life as an undocumented immigrant became increasingly frustrating for Escobar, who had dreams of going to college and teaching. “When you don’t have no documents, people don’t want to give you a job, and you know you have the smarts and a lot of stuff, and people just treat you like, like you’re nothing,” he said.

The fear of deportation became even more acute in 2003 when Escobar married his wife, Carla. They have two children, a 10-month-old daughter and little Mario. “That’s one thing that keeps me alive, is family,” he said.

Finding legal representation to help reopen his case took months. The Central American Resource Center held his case for over a year before telling Escobar they couldn’t help him.

“The alien may seek legal representation at his or her own expense,” said Elaine Komis, spokesperson for the Executive Office for Immigration Review at the Justice Department.

Frenzen, director of the USC Immigration Clinic, said the expense involved is part of the problem.

Sweeping immigration reform in 1996 enacted new restrictions on free legal aid, said Frenzen. Federally funded legal clinics were suddenly barred from raising money for non-U.S. citizens, and as a result, pro bono immigration lawyers became a prized commodity.

“It’s a process that just has a lot of complicated pitfalls,” Frenzen said of political asylum applications. “And it’s difficult enough to negotiate with a half-decent lawyer.”

Lack of legal representation during the interview stage of the asylum process often means that applicants must attend immigration hearings to review the initial denials of their claims, said Deutsch.

“Usually, when they represent themselves in Anaheim in the first interview, in general, they don’t do a good job,” she said. “They may not have a coherent story or detailed story; they don’t know how much detail has to go in; they are reluctant, for whatever reason to just disclose things. They don’t understand the system.”

Most immigration plaintiffs proceed without representation, according to justice department statistics from 2006, when only 113,140 cases were represented by lawyers, compared to 210,705 that were not.

Legal representation becomes even more crucial, according to Deutsch, because many asylum cases are initially denied due to technicalities, a side effect of poor legal counsel.

In Escobar’s case, a chance meeting with an immigration lawyer at a Hollywood coffee shop led to the immediate re-opening of his case. His lawyer, who Escobar calls his “bright star from the Middle East,” charged nothing for her services.

As one hearing became two and two became four, Escobar yearned for an outcome. Though the case went before a judge in March, 2005, Escobar’s case was not resolved until October, 2006.

“The rescheduling,” he said. “I mean, I don’t have words to describe it because of all of the emotional trauma you go through. You don’t know if you’re going to stay here, and here I am in the middle of my college career, my college education, thinking, ‘OK. Am I going to stay here? Are they going to kick me out? What am I going to do?’”

The reason for a rescheduled hearing may be quite simple but the process is not, according to Deutsch. “The thing is that it’s not rescheduled for next week because the judge is so busy,” she said. “It’s rescheduled when the judge has an opening.”

Like any court case, however, asylum hearings take time. Sometimes, as happened with the first rescheduling of Escobar’s case, the court doesn’t have all the documents necessary to proceed.

“Technically, it’s not supposed to take more than three months, but in reality, it takes more than that,” said Deutsch.

Months may pass before the hearings even begin. “There’s time involved in preparing the case, both from the respondent’s side and the Department of Homeland Security’s side,” said Komis, who said that “waiting for witnesses, waiting for documentation, as well as the docket for the court” is just a part of the process.

Rushing may be the worst thing to do in asylum cases, according to Frenzen. “The most insignificant mistakes can end up being a basis for denial,” he said. “And that’s why if you don’t take the 20, 30, 40 hours to carefully fill out an asylum application and to write a supporting declaration, you’re likely to be denied.”

The Program for Torture victims works with clients to document persecution in an applicant’s home country. “We take a lot of time to prepare the reports because we want to get to know the client, make sure that we get a good story,” said Deutsch.

Providing such context can be crucial for Homeland Security interviews and appeals hearings. “If someone comes into an immigration court and makes a claim and has no documentation whatsoever to back that claim, is there going to be a favorable decision for them? Probably not,” said Bentley.

Escobar’s case was bolstered by Salvadoran newspaper clippings. “There were little articles in the newspapers of El Salvador in 1989 with my name,” he said, referring to his grandmother’s efforts to track him after his kidnapping by paramilitaries.

The documentation issue goes to the heart of U.S. asylum policy. “First and foremost, the burden of proof is on the applicant to establish that the applicant is a refugee,” Komis wrote in an email.

Credibility, she said, is one of the most important elements of an asylum claim.

For asylum-seekers with a history of persecution, however, establishing credibility can be a painful process.

Efforts to document torture victims’ experiences are emotionally challenging for clients and therapists alike. “Just by talking, it puts you back into the situation where the torture occurred and brings vivid memories that you want to have as a clinician because it’s important for the credibility of the client,” said Deutsch. “But at the same time, it’s excruciating for the client.”

Escobar was a child of war, not a torture victim, said Deutsch. Yet talking about his kidnapping experience brought him to tears on the stand.

“I think what happened was that my lawyer didn’t know some of the stuff that happened to men when I was in captivity,” said Escobar. “It was very painful. Imagine an 11-year-old kid just being hit in the face like if you were a grown man. You know, punched, verbal abuse – you name it.”

Escobar thinks his emotional reaction helped win his case. “The judge was the one actually who asked me those questions, and I think that’s when the judge knows when someone is faking it or if it’s real,” he said. “I just, I couldn’t take it. And I told him, if you send me back, it’s like sending a Jew back to the Holocaust.”

The judge in Escobar’s case, William J. Martin , like all immigration court judges, was required to base his ruling on more than human compassion alone. “The immigration judge cannot use discretion to grant asylum simply because the respondent is a good person, or because the immigration judge feels sorry for him/her,” Komis said in an email.

Following the law is the principal duty of immigration judges, according to Deutsch. “Many of them are very nice with good hearts, but they have to follow the rules; they have to comply with every single detail.”

Escobar has nothing but praise for the judge in his case. “The Honorable Judge Martin is a wonderful man that was able to listen, and he knew that this was a very unique case,” he said.
“My god, I remember that day,” said Escobar. “I was so happy.”

A green card and U.S. citizenship are the next steps for Escobar, as well as a master’s degree in literature from Arizona State University.

Yet his experience with the political asylum process is far from over.

With a deportation order already against her, Escobar’s mother must fill out asylum paperwork. “She’s scared. I’m scared, too,” he said. “I’m on my way to graduate school and dealing with all these things.”

Escobar must deal, too, with his own memories of El Salvador, something he achieves through poetry.

“He loves poetry, too,” says Escobar, nodding toward Mario. By now, the green monster truck is fixed. “I like all the poetry my dad makes,” says young Mario.

Escobar begins to read a poem he wrote during his asylum hearing, an unpublished and untitled work. Even as he sits on his wooden porch, his voice still seems to carry the burdens of his time in El Salvador.

“Clash of space, shouldering time,” he says. “After a burning decade, cry soul of mine, cry soul of mine.”

He pauses.

“Cry.”