Azeb and Dree Collopy
We are happy to once again begin our client of the month series with a Dree Collopy victory! This month, we celebrate our client Azeb, who was granted asylum from Ethiopia after a long battle to obtain the safety in this country that she deserves. Azeb fled to the US after she had been wrongfully imprisoned in Ethiopia for standing up to government harm to journalists and political opponents. 
During these difficult times for our country, when the Trump Administration has suspended the refugee resettlement program and attempted to paint all refugees as terrorists and security threats, Benach Collopy has continued the fight for human rights, including the right to seek asylum and protection from persecution.
We are pleased to introduce our Clients of the Month for February 2017, Karla Duran and her six-year-old son Anthony. 
Today, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, I am thinking about the M.S. St. Louis. In 1939, while war waged in Europe, the M.S. St. Louis, a transatlantic ship carrying Jewish refugees fleeing the Third Reich, reached U.S. waters by way of Hamburg and Havana. Seeking protection from persecution and a safe place to start over with their families, these refugees hoped to be admitted to the United States of America. 
This post was written by Liana Montecinos.
Thirsty, hungry, at the brink of exhaustion, and with fear of violent deaths looming large back home is how many Central American children cross into the U.S. I know this because I have the privilege to work with child refugees in my capacity as paralegal at Benach Collopy and previously as a legal assistant at CAIR Coalition. But, I also know this because, like the children I work with now, I fled my native Honduras at 11 and I also crossed through Guatemala and Mexico via foot. 
On August 5, the 2016 Olympic Games will open in Rio de Janeiro. I love the Olympics because it is a time when we all set aside our day-to-day worries and differences to come together to cheer on the world’s elite athletes as they represent their home countries. But I am particularly interested in watching this year’s Olympic Games because of one specific “country.” This year, 206 countries will participate. 
“We live in the age of the refugee, the age of the exile.”
Ariel Dorfman (Argentine-Chilean playwright, academic and human rights activist)
By Satsita Muradova
If someone asked me what was the most difficult decision I have made in my lifetime, I would respond – seeking asylum in the United States. I know from personal experience that no one would leave their country of origin, their home, loved ones (often without a chance of seeing them again) and the life that they were accustomed to unless that place had become a living hell. 
This is a big week at Benach Collopy as a number of important projects are coming together and we are very excited to share them with you.
First, we are very pleased to introduce Maria Celina Marquez as the inaugural Benach Collopy- Whitman Walker Health Fellow for Trans Asylum. This fellowship is a collaboration between Benach Collopy and Whitman Walker Health, to provide a law student with a summer fellowship to work on asylum cases for transgender people. 
At Benach Collopy, we share the outrage over the terrorist massacre in Paris. We weep for the families who lives where turned inside out by a murderous death cult. As residents of another Western capital, we are all too aware that we are also a target of the missionaries of hate. Now, in the name of protecting us, many politicians call for an end to refugee admissions. 
Since last summer, when the Obama Administration hastily resurrected the concept of family detention to jail refugee women and children seeking asylum, thousands of women and children have languished in inhumane conditions, have been refused meaningful access to counsel and interpreters, have been hurled through bond proceedings with predetermined results, and have been sent directly and expeditiously back to the danger from which they fled – all in violation of U.S. 