Chico man in detention seeks asylum, relief

Chico criminal defense attorney Kevin Sears remembers that day in late July in Butte County Superior Court when he heard what he describes as “awful screaming” outside the courtroom.

The bailiff told him that agents from Immigration, Customs & Enforcement (ICE) were outside. “I just about fainted,” Sears said. “I just had no clue they were there. It was the first time they had come.”

Sears acts as public defender for Butte County DUI cases, so on any given day he may have up to 50 clients in court. When he learned what was happening outside the courtroom, he thought immediately of one client in particular who had been anxious about ICE courthouse arrests around the state.

That client was Ozan, a Turkish national, a Chico resident who had been released after entering the country almost two years ago. He had requested asylum and undergone the initial screening, and his asylum case is pending. Ozan was one of a half-dozen people seized that day at the Oroville courthouse, and has been held in ICE detention since.

His fiancée, Virginia Hauer, asked ChicoSol not to use Ozan’s last name in order to protect his family. Hauer is raising money with a GoFundMe to cover the cost of immigration attorneys, document translations and the video or texting communication that she occasionally gets with him. Sometimes it’s just a minute and a half by phone, as the tablets that detainees use for outside communication are often in disrepair.

Ozan exists in legal limbo as the Trump administration erects more obstacles for asylum-seekers. His detention in an Arizona ICE facility makes it challenging for him to pursue his asylum case and collaborate with Sears on his Butte County case.

Ozan faces two misdemeanor driving-related charges after police stopped him in Paradise the night of Feb. 12. He pled innocent to both charges; Hauer said Ozan was lost that night in a town he didn’t know.

Sears wants immigrants – and all his clients —  to get a fair hearing on their charges. “What a tragedy it would be if a person facing pending charges gets scooped up and labeled without having the opportunity to have their case heard in court,” Sears told ChicoSol.

“Now we have a whole population never getting their cases heard in court … this is what people are fleeing” — Sears

“Not being labelled is about the principle of innocent until proven guilty,” Sears added. “It’s a huge detriment on somebody’s life to be labeled …. Now we have a whole population being scooped up and never getting their cases heard in court. It’s a travesty. We don’t do that in this country; this is what people are fleeing.”

Grabbed at Butte County Superior Court

As Ozan and Hauer left the courtroom that July day, he was tackled to the floor by a half-dozen officers, Hauer said. There was no time to resist, even if he had wanted to. Hauer described the scene this way:

“Ozan?” one of the men had said. “Yes,” Ozan said tentatively.

“They were down on him, he just starts yelling, he couldn’t do much,” Hauer said. “They took him to an SUV out front.”

He shouted to her to call an attorney.

As the officers left with her partner in tow, Hauer stood in front of the courthouse crying. Her phone battery was at 10%, and in desperation she turned to Google, typing “detaining immigrant emergency help.” NorCal Resist Chico popped up. She placed a call to them and a network member talked her through the steps she should next take.

Hauer said Ozan was held for five days at the Capitol Mall ICE office. “He was chained to a pole or a table for five days with handcuffs, and still has bruises on his wrists and ankles,” she said earlier this year.

In a statement shortly after the ICE sweep, the Superior Court said it complies with state policy and law that prohibit local law enforcement agencies from assisting ICE.

Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey said he dislikes courthouse arrests because “defendants are being sucked away” before victims see justice accomplished.

Yet, for non-citizens, court hearings have become risky propositions — regardless of whether they’re charged with minor or violent offenses. A Gridley woman told ChicoSol earlier this year that her husband, who works on the rice harvest and has a green card giving him legal permanent residency, was detained when he showed up for a court hearing in Sacramento.

Hauer said Ozan wrote her that the detention center is a “terrible place with filthy toilets, the lights are always on.”

“It’s simple to understand this place,” he said, writing her in Turkish which she translated with AI Pro. “They do everything just to make sure you don’t die – but at the same time, they push you to the edge so you’ll sign that damn paper to go back to your country.”

A long journey

Ozan, a Turkish citizen, belongs to a persecuted religious minority in his home country; his asylum application indicates he suffered torture and threats. “When I think about returning to my country, I worry about my safety and fear of being killed,” he states in his application, which was shared with ChicoSol.

As Ozan crossed into the United States, Hauer was struggling after losing the family home where she had been living to the 2018 Camp Fire. Ozan settled in Chico because he found an asylum sponsor in town; he then met Hauer, who was living across the street.

The neighborhood was a “real rough place,” she said.

Ozan started coming over to check on her. He was doing odd jobs, the paperwork to obtain a work permit, and biking to appointments. He found an abandoned kitten and delivered it to Hauer. That was the beginning of a meaningful relationship.

“Every day without him is heartbreaking,” she wrote in a text to ChicoSol. “I finally found someone I could enjoy life with – someone who inspired me to keep learning. Every day without him gets worse.”

A crumbling asylum system

The United States has a history of systematically accepting people fleeing persecution dating back to post World War II. That system has evolved to meet international human rights standards, granting protection after people who qualify as asylum-seekers arrive in the country.

But as asylum-seekers face a series of new barriers and in some cases incarceration, it becomes more difficult for them to pursue their cases, attorneys say.

Heather Hogan, an attorney with the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and a former U.S. government asylum officer, said this administration is trying to discourage asylum-seekers in several ways, including through detention.

“We know that cruelty is the point,” Hogan said at an American Community Media news briefing in October. “Trauma is the point to get people to leave the U.S. We know the federal government is using detention to get people to give up on their cases. They’re trying to maximize the punitive nature of detention.”

Hogan said much of what is happening in the country isn’t well understood by the public, that many Americans associate such practices with “places that don’t respect human rights.”

Hogan said most asylum-seekers have already had “traumatizing experiences” before arriving in the country, and the trauma is exacerbated by “long detention.”

Asylum, Hogan said, is often given to “people whose governments have persecuted them through imprisonment. So they flee to the U.S. and are then put back in prison.”

More than 68,000 people are now being held in immigrant detention centers across the country — a record high, reports The Guardian. Most of them have not been convicted of a crime.

Cal Matters, in reporting on Turkish immigrants who have been nabbed by ICE, noted that a 2023 U.S. Department of State report found that there were “credible reports” of disappearance and torture by or on behalf of the Turkish government.

Hauer said a judge was considering Ozan’s case when the Department of Homeland Security asked for more clarification on several points. Work is underway to obtain that documentation.

A life-or-death battle

Ozan helped Hauer move into her small apartment in Paradise on Feb. 12. That evening, Hauer asked him to drive a borrowed car to the store for food. When Ozan saw Paradise police behind him, he panicked, fearing that his immigration status, temporary driver’s license and poor English made him vulnerable, Hauer said. (She said he had also been spending too much time following posts on a local Facebook police-and-crime feed.)

His later courthouse arrest triggered what is now a five-month journey of incarceration and isolation. He’s in a detention center “where no one speaks his language,” Hauer said.

“It’s life or death at this point,” she said. “We’re fighting and fighting and fighting to keep him here.”

The GoFundMe that Hauer opened for Ozan is here.

This story was produced with support from Aqui Estamos/Here We Stand, and is part of an occasional series on the impact locally of the immigration crackdown.

Leslie Layton is editor of ChicoSol.