Watan-A refugee stranded in Iraq for over five years has filed a lawsuit against the US government for refusing to allow her to return to the United States with her children.
The woman claims she faces death threats from the same armed Shia groups that killed her father, who worked as an interpreter for the US Army.
She fled to the United States in 2016 with her children, where they were all granted refugee status. However, her husband’s case was delayed and ultimately denied.
Concerned for her safety – especially after recently receiving a bullet in the mail – the woman returned to Iraq with her children to see him, thinking it might be their last chance.
Upon arrival in Iraq, she applied for travel documents to return to the United States – but after waiting for years for a response, the government approved her children’s requests but not hers.
If her children do not return to the United States by May 2024, their documents will expire, leaving the woman to choose between sending her children to the United States alone or staying in Iraq with their lives at risk.
The woman told Middle East Eye: “All I want is to feel safe and live a normal life. To enroll my children in school. They haven’t gone to school since we returned to Iraq, and they haven’t left. Not for fun… I don’t want a normal life for my children.”
She added: “My children always blame me for bringing them back to Iraq. They tell me it’s my fault, that they came back and they’re in this situation now.”
The pressure from her ordeal has left her with several physical and mental health issues, including asthma and depression.
The woman said she used to get medicine from a local pharmacy when three armed men, whom she said were members of the Saraya al-Salam militia – an armed group linked to the powerful Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr – attacked her from a truck.
She explained: “Since then, I’ve been wandering in search of safety. I’ve been living in different cities, and now I’ve settled somehow in Baghdad.”
The lawsuit, filed by the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) and Hohwill Shuster and Goldberg, argues that the decision by US Citizenship and Immigration Services to deny the woman the right to return was “unlawful”.
It refers to the law that exempts refugees from the need to return to obtain a travel document to enter the United States.
Kate Mayer, a lawyer on the IRAP litigation team, said the woman’s case was not unusual at all, and that many new refugees urgently need to return to the country they fled for their relatives.
“We ask the court to compel the US government to fulfill its obligations to accept refugees like Jane Doe under the terms of the Refugee Act, as Congress intended,” she said.
She pointed out that the US government is currently keeping a refugee family in danger for no reason.