Good News and Urgent Request for Support

Lesbian mom “Djaili”has been granted permanent legal residence as an asylum refugee!  Under international law she is now eligible to bring her three children to the U.S. from Cameroon. 

Women on the Border launched a campaign in 2020 to fund the various costs associated with having Djaili’s childred medically examined before the U.S. will admit them into the U.S.   

The children were approved for travel to the U.S. in 2019.  However, there have been  numerous bureaucratic delays because of COVID that have prevented them from joining their mother in Texas.  

The reunification process is complex and expensive.  We need to raise about $10,000 to bring this family together.

Because Djaili was violently persecuted in Cameroon she cannot travel there to pick up her children without losing her asylum in the U.S.  To get her children someone has to take them to a country in Africa where Cameroonians don’t need visas.  They will travel to Senegal.  Djaili will go from the U.S. to Senegal to pick up her three children and bring them to Texas. 

THE 2020 FUNDRAISER TO REUNITE A LESBIAN FAMILY:

Asylum seekers come to the U.S. fleeing persecution and systemic violence. They come seeking protection under international human rights law. When someone finally gets refugee status they need help to rebuild their lives and to reunite the family they were forced to leave behind.

In Cameroon, a woman who falls in love with another woman is ostracized and threatened with beatings, torture, imprisonment or death. If the neighbors find out you are in a lesbian relationship they will likely pelt you, your partner, and your family members with stones. They might even pour acid on you. They will torture your children.  They will accuse you of bringing bad luck to the neighborhood. Together, the neighbors will call the police and join in harassing you and the entire family.

Adult consensual same-sex relations are a crime in Cameroon.  Article 347 of Cameroon’s penal code provides for imprisonment of 6 months to five years, plus a fine, for anyone who has sex with someone of the same sex.

If you are imprisoned for being a lesbian you will sleep on the ground in a crowded cell without a toilet, urinate and defecate in a stinking cell, and sometimes end up sleeping in your own urine or that of a cellmate.  You might be raped in that prison.  On the outside, your children and another family will be constantly at risk of violence just because they’re related to you.

A woman who endured all of this – and worse – made it out of Cameroon and to the United States where, eventually, she won asylum. We’ve called her Djaili, but that isn’t her real name. Her minor children are entitled to join her here, but Djaili cannot return to Cameroon to get them.  If she goes back to her home country she would be in grave danger.  If she leaves the U.S. she would lose her asylum. So it will cost money to buy the airfare for her children and for the adult who will bring them to Djaili because they are too young to travel by themselves.

WOMEN ON THE BORDER is helping to reunite Djaili and her children. Will you help by contributing to airfare between the U.S. and Cameroon and to cover other essential expenses?

Or send a check to Women on the Border/Reunite a Family Fund, P.O. BOX 303338 AUSTIN, TX 78703-0056.

Women on the Border is a registered 501c3 tax-exempt organization, EIN 74-3003850.