He told immigration officials that he had been kidnapped from his parents’ farm by a terrorist group that forced him to live like a slave at a training camp. He said he escaped, only to be captured by the Sri Lankan Army and tortured repeatedly because he is an ethnic Tamil.
But if Balasundaram, now 27, expected to find freedom in the United States, he was mistaken.
He has remained locked up at the Suffolk County House of Correction since he arrived in Boston nearly 22 months ago, even though an immigration judge granted him asylum in February 2009.
On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts filed suit in US District Court, urging a judge to immediately release Balasundaram and rule that US officials have violated his civil rights and the Immigration and Nationality Act.
The suit says the Department of Homeland Security has left Balasundaram to languish in jail while appealing his asylum, on the grounds that he provided material support to terrorists while being held captive by them.
“He managed to escape this Tamil training camp,’’ said Laura Rotolo, an attorney for the ACLU who filed the suit on behalf of Balasundaram, “. . . He comes to the US only to be stuck for 22 months, and who knows how much longer, in a United States jail. It’s just a bitter irony.’’
Rotolo said the government has no evidence that Balasundaram provided support to terrorists and is basing its contention on Balasundaram’s personal account of the five months he was held captive in 2007 by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, also known as the Tamil Tigers and designated by the US government as a terrorist organization.
The rebel group was embroiled in a civil war with the Sri Lankan government in the country located off the coast of India.
The suit names Bruce Chadbourne, director of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of Detention and Removal in Boston; and Suffolk County Sheriff Andrea J. Cabral, who oversees the jail where Balasundaram is being held.
Brian P. Hale, a spokesman for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, said the agency is precluded from commenting on a specific or ongoing case “when national security statutes are involved.’’
A spokesman for Cabral referred calls to federal authorities.
Balasundaram has not been charged with any crime. He is being held until the Board of Immigration Appeals rules on the government’s appeal, a process that Rotolo says has taken twice as long as usual and could take another year or more.After arriving in Boston on July 14, 2008, Balasundaram told immigration officials that four members of the terrorist group showed up at his family’s home in March 2007 and forced him into a car at gunpoint. He said he was held captive, along with other young men, at a training camp, where he was forced under threat of death to work in the kitchen and watch demonstrations about avoiding the Sri Lankan Army and “strapping a bomb to one’s chest,’’ according to the suit. Balasundaram never used a bomb or any other weapon and was an unwilling observer, according to the suit.
Later, he was moved to another camp, where he was forced to do physical exercise and watch war videos, the suit says.
In October 2007, Balasundaram escaped from the camp, then was captured, tortured, and interrogated by Sri Lankan authorities seeking information about the terrorist group’s activities, the suit says. At a Sri Lankan government camp, “army officers beat Balasundaram, hung him upside down, hit his back with barbed wire, and put a bag doused with gasoline on his face until he could no longer breathe,’’ the suit says.
The US Department of State and human rights groups documented abuse and persecution in Sri Lanka, where the Tamil Tigers, fighting for a separate state for the Tamil minority, forcibly recruited civilians and the government illegally detained thousands of Tamils on suspicion of terrorism.
Last year, the Sri Lankan military defeated the rebel group, ending a 26-year civil war.
The Department of Homeland Security argued during the hearing on Balasundaram’s asylum request that he should not be allowed to stay in the United States because he received military training from a terrorist organization and provided material support to terrorists.
But Immigration Judge Eliza C. Klein rejected those arguments, concluding that Balasundaram did not receive military-type training from the terrorist organization or provide material support.
“Specifically, he was forced to watch propaganda training videos and observe [Tamil Tiger] members using weapons and crawling through barbed wire fences,’’ Klein wrote in February 2009. “His limited exposure was neither willing nor participatory.’’
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