In recent years, Congress has enacted several pieces of legislation that attempt to keep terrorists from obtaining immigration status in the United States.  The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 and the REAL ID Act of 2005 amended U.S. immigration laws to expand the definition of a "terrorist organization" and, in turn, dramatically broadened the class of people that are barred from admission to the United States for having provided material support to terrorists.  In practice these laws have prevented many genuine asylum seekers from gaining protection in the United States-including, ironically, those who were victims of terrorist activity.

Under current immigration law, a collection of individuals may now be considered a terrorist organization if it is a "group of two or more individuals, whether organized or not, which engages in, or has a subgroup which engages in" terrorist activities. Terrorist activity includes any "threat, attempt, or conspiracy" to use "any...explosive, firearm, or other weapon or dangerous device (other than for mere personal or monetary gain), with intent to endanger...the safety of one or more individuals or to cause substantial damage to property." A group's activity is terrorist activity if it is "unlawful under the laws of the place where it is committed (or which, if it had been committed in the United States, would be unlawful under the laws of the United States or any State)."

The new and modified definitions are so broad as to achieve an absurd result. 

The National Immigrant Justice Center represents a woman from a country in central Africa who was forced to house rebels in her home for three days after they burst into the house and took her family hostage. After three days, police burst in and captured the rebels. The police also arrested the woman and her family, assuming they were sympathetic to the rebels.  The woman was beaten after she refused to admit that she supported the rebels. Despite the fact that the woman and her family were victims of rebel violence, under the material support law, she could be barred from admission as an asylee in the United States. 

The Department of Homeland Security offered some acknowledgement today that the laws defining "material support to terrorism" are too broad.

During a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled "The ‘Material Support' Bar: Denying Refuge to the Persecuted?" a nurse who had been kidnapped in Colombia and forced at gunpoint to provide medical care to FARC guerillas testified that when she escaped to the United States and requested asylum, the Department of Homeland Security rejected her asylum claim. According to the agency, "There are reasonable grounds for regarding you as a danger to the security of the United States in that you have provided material support to those who engage in terrorist activity."

From behind a screen that protected her identity, the woman continued:

I cannot believe that I was denied asylum based on supporting a terrorist organization. I never acted voluntarily- I only provided medical support because I was threatened at gunpoint and told that if I did not help the FARC soldiers both me and my family would be killed. I sincerely felt that I had no other option because I would have been killed if I had not done what they wanted. The asylum application has been pending for almost seven years and I am still overwhelmed with the fear that I will be sent back to Colombia, or that FARC will take action against my family. I have no sense of security, and it has been very difficult to raise my young daughter here with such uncertainty. Deportation back to Colombia would literally be a death sentence for us.

Just before the close of the hearing, an official from the Department of Homeland Security informed the woman that the agency would reopen her case for review.

The National Immigrant Justice Center submitted a statement for today's hearing, offering our perspective as legal service providers for asylum seekers who may suffer unjustly as a result of overbroad material support laws.