Kramer Levin Wins Asylum for Gay Man Persecuted in Ecuador

Jean-Paul Ciardullo and Marissa Leung recently obtained a grant of asylum for an Ecuadorian man who was persecuted by police in his home country because of his homosexuality. Though the Ecuadorian government recently enacted new civil rights laws, the local police repeatedly targeted our client, severely beating him and using extortion and intimidation to destroy his livelihood. When our client finally fled to the United States in 2002, he was suffering from numerous debilitating medical conditions and did not speak English. He sought assistance from an immigration attorney, but was declined representation. By the time he obtained medical treatment and filed an application for asylum, the one-year filing deadline had passed, and he was placed into removal proceedings in Immigration Court in New York.

Kramer Levin took the case in 2007, re-filed our client’s asylum application, and collected affidavits and expert reports that showed he was at risk of future persecution in Ecuador. At our client’s Immigration Court hearing, Kramer Levin successfully overcame the government's objection to the late filing of our client’s original application by submitting numerous doctor affidavits documenting his severe medical disabilities during his first year in the United States. The Immigration Judge granted our client asylum at the end of closing arguments, finding that his medical complications constituted extraordinary circumstances that warranted an exception to the one-year filing deadline. Former Kramer Levin associate Eric Welsh assisted with the matter, which was referred by Immigration Equality and supervised by Aaron Frankel.