WASHINGTON — The first time they came for her, the Colombian guerrillas shoved the 31-year-old nurse blindfolded into the back of a green Renault sedan. Her kidnappers took her to a house and forced her to treat one of their commandants, who was writhing in pain from a bullet wound to the leg.
The woman said she was abducted seven more times in 1997 and 1998 to give medical care to Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia members. They warned her not to go to the police. "I know you have a daughter," one man said, prodding her with a gun. In 2000, after her cousin was tortured and killed, she fled. Now she is in Northern California, working as a nurse and raising her daughter.
Today, her hopes of staying in the U.S. have run smack into the war on terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security rejected her asylum claim. Their reason: By giving the guerrillas medical care -- willingly or not -- she was supporting terrorism.
Laws passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, deny admission to anyone who has provided "material support" -- money, food, clothing, advice -- to terrorist groups. In the last few years, these provisions and the definition of terrorism have been expanded to the point that they are disqualifying people who even immigration judges agree pose no threat to the U.S.
Refugee advocates cite cases in which the administration has denied asylum to Liberian women forced to cook and clean for rebels who raped them and killed family members. Colombians who paid kidnappers' ransoms to free family members also have been barred for providing material support. So many refugee applicants have been blocked for this reason that last year the United Nations Refugee Agency stopped trying to settle Colombians in the U.S.
Critics of the government's policy, who are pushing for legislation next year to change the system, say that such disqualifications are a big reason why refugee admissions in fiscal 2006 fell to 41,277 from more than 50,000 in each of the two previous years.
The material-support clause has even snared American allies who fought alongside U.S. troops or at the United States' behest. Cubans who tried to overthrow Fidel Castro in the Bay of Pigs uprising are being denied entry, as are Montagnards and Hmong who fought alongside American troops in Vietnam.
