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Persecuted, abused and abandoned by her family and her government, Gilda Ghanipour had just one thing left to cling to— her faith. She had converted from Islam to Christianity, a capital offense in her native Iran, and sought refuge in the United States. Without legal U.S. citizenship or immigration status, she faced deportation back to Iran, where imprisonment, further persecution and a possible death sentence awaited her.
Ghanipour had solid grounds for applying for asylum in the U.S., but she was destitute and had no means to pay for legal help. Federal legislation allows law students, under the supervision of a licensed attorney, to represent clients who cannot afford legal representation. So Ghanipour, desperate for documented protection from the Iranian government, looked to a team of Pepperdine law students for her freedom.
“She really had a well-rounded fear of persecution,” said Kelly Everett, one of the Pepperdine law students who worked on Ghanipour’s case. “The [Iranian] government … knew she was going in and out of her country and given her problems in her past. So she genuinely feared going back.”
Everett is a member of the Pepperdine School of Law’s Asylum Clinic, a special unit of aspiring lawyers who represent poverty-stricken immigrants seeking legal status in the United States. Like Ghanipour, all these clients request asylum out of fear of religious persecution abroad. By the time they have arrived at Pepperdine, the clinic is often their last hope for attaining safe haven.
“When these victims of persecution come to campus, they see the cross,” said Judge Bruce J. Einhorn, founder and director of the Asylum Clinic. “They sit down with kind people who … listen to them respectfully. It’s transformative. Some of these people have never known kindness in their whole lives. And the first time they know it is here, at Pepperdine.”
The clinic does not only take in clients who are Christian converts. Any refugee who has been persecuted for his or her religion—whether it be Christianity, Judaism, Islam or another belief system—is eligible for representation. The clients, as well as the students in the clinic, come from a number of different religious and cultural backgrounds.
“Justice doesn’t have one ethnicity, one color, or one creed,” Everett said. “What we can all agree upon are the basic rights of humans … It’s great to have people in the clinic with diverse backgrounds because they can relate and speak to different clients.”
Einhorn selects students who have a fervor for international peace and justice to be in his clinic. During their first semester with the clinic, new members take a course called Asylum and Refugee Law, which Einhorn teaches.
Students carry out clinic responsibilities under the supervision of Einhorn and immigration attorneys Susan Hill and Emily Allen. According to Einhorn, students conduct “intake interviews,” in which they meet with potential clients and determine if their stories are credible. If they choose to take a case, the next step is to learn more about the client’s background and to help complete any necessary paperwork. If there are legal proceedings, students represent the clients in court. Einhorn meets with his students at least once a week to go over the clinic’s cases and input suggestions.
Einhorn, who served as a U.S. Immigration Judge for 17 years, has a special connection to the asylum law that governs the clinic. In 1980, Einhorn, a Justice Dept. lawyer at the time, was the principal draftsperson for the Refugee Act, an immigration law that admits refugees into the U.S. for humanitarian reasons.
Alex Voschinsky, a third-year law student and member of the Asylum Clinic, said he was one of two students originally assigned to Ghanipour’s case last fall. He and fellow student Edyta-Christina Grzybowska met face-to-face with Ghanipour, gathering evidence for the case and fleshing out the distressing details of her past.
Voschinsky said Ghanipour had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of her physical, mental and psychological persecution.
“Her past history is filled with pain and trauma,” Voschinsky said. “There was a lot of hurt in the past that caused her to block out some memory. By interviewing her, we eventually got the facts in a much more detailed and specific way that really showed how much [she] suffered. That was not always an easy process, but finally we did it.”
Ghanipour was born in Iran into a Muslim family. In 1979, she moved to Germany for a to study medicine, and eventually came to the United States where she had relatives. While in the U.S., she converted to Christianity. Her family responded by abandoning her.
Because her immigration status had lapsed, she could not find work or medical care. For nine years, she traveled from address to address, from homeless shelter to homeless shelter, all the while suffering from various physical and emotional problems. But because she faced a possible execution in Iran, she remained in the U.S. illegally.
About a year ago, Ghanipour showed up the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles, where she was referred to the Asylum Clinic.
“She was very distraught, and very willing for us to help her,” Everett said. “She bounced from shelter to shelter, house to house, to where there wasn’t a whole lot of continuity in her life except for the clinic and the people who were working on her application. It was not just a legal matter— [she was] relying on real people who were really willing to help.”
The students at the clinic were struck by Ghanipour’s spiritual conviction. Despite her dire circumstances, she always had faith that God would rescue her from persecution.
“She said she was touched by God,” Voschinsky said. “[She] is a very spiritual person, and this made her trustworthy and believable … Not that someone who’s not religious cannot be believable. But it definitely felt like she was being honest because she coming from a place that’s very, very deep.”
According to Everett, Ghanipour’s faithfulness gave her a sense of authenticity that assisted her during the case.
“She’s an incredibly genuine woman,” said Everett, who worked on Ghanipour’s asylum application. “When you’re applying [for asylum], the government really scrutinizes how genuine you are. She’s a very faithful convert. God is very much in her life day to day.”
In May, Pepperdine law student and clinic member Kristin Heinrich accompanied Ghanipour to the Dept. of Homeland Security’s Asylum Office in Anaheim. There, they presented Ghanipour’s case for asylum.
According to Einhorn, the government had three options at this point: grant the asylum, refer the case to another branch of Homeland Security, or deny asylum and prosecute Ghanipour with deportation in front of a federal judge. Therefore, by identifying herself to the government, Ghanipour exposed her illegal status in the U.S. and risked deportation by the same agency that could grant her asylum.
“[That risk] was something we discussed with her at great length,” Einhorn said. “But she had a lot of courage, and she was also a deeply committed Christian. And I think that she felt that it was important to make a statement about her principles and her faith, and to do so to a government in a country she loved.”
On Aug. 28, the clinic received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security announcing that Ghanipour’s asylum application had been approved. Ghanipour, with the legal support of Pepperdine law students, had finally received the freedom from persecution she had fought so hard for. Unfortunately, she does not know it. She disappeared in late July and has been missing ever since.
This was the Asylum Clinic’s first successful case, and there have been two more victories since then. Heinrich said her experience with the clinic has been vocationally satisfying and uplifting. It has also been a reflection of her Christian faith, which she said centers around love, service and self-sacrifice.
“To work on cases and see the difference that you can make in someone’s life … that’s why I’m in law school,” Heinrich said. “And to me, that’s the ultimate way of how we can use our legal gifts to help each other.”
In addition to searching for Ghanipour, the clinic is currently representing several new clients, including a Christian convert, a Jewish convert and a Mexican police detective whose devout Catholic beliefs have put him at risk by Latin American drug cartels. According to Einhorn, it’s common for criminal organizations to resent individuals who are deeply religious and refuse to identify with drug cartels and gangs.
Einhorn, who is a member of the Jewish faith, said it’s critical for all individuals who believe in God to take a stand against religious persecution of any kind.
“If you believe in God, and if you’re a monotheist,” Einhorn said, “you learn very quickly in your own faith, whether Jewish, Muslim, or Christian, that the God that made you in his image, made your Christian and Muslim friends in his image, too.
“If you assault the dignity of another human being, if you insult his faith, if you persecute him for his beliefs, then you are spitting in the face of God, because we are [all] made in his image. It seems to me that if you can’t learn that, you’re not being very true to your own faith.”
The Pepperdine Asylum Clinic is the only asylum-specific clinic in the greater Los Angeles area. In order to handle all the cases on its growing waiting list, as well as pay for interpreters and psychologists for its clients, the clinic needs to continue receiving independent funding.
Individuals interested in donating to the Asylum Clinic can e-mail Einhorn (BJEJUDGE@aol.com) or Director of Law Advancement Stacy Taylor (Stacy.Taylor@pepperdine.edu).
“If we raise more money, instead of doing 8, 9, 10 cases, we can do 50 or 100,” Einhorn said. “The money you give to my clinic will save human life— I don’t know a better pitch than that.”
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