Disabled Teen From Guinea Denied Asylum

Rights Groups Watch Case

An immigration judge in Virginia has denied political asylum to a mildly retarded teenager whose case has highlighted the plight of thousands of children who arrive in the country illegally.

Christopher Nugent, an attorney for Malik Jarno, said Judge Joan V. Churchill of the federal immigration court in Arlington issued a written opinion Wednesday. He said he had not yet received a copy. He planned to appeal.

"I'm stunned, but have an unyielding optimism that sooner or later this orphan of the world . . . will receive a final home," Nugent said.

Jarno fled his native Guinea in 1998, after his brother disappeared and his father was slain by government forces because he belonged to a political opposition group, human rights workers say. His mother died when he was young.

Jarno sought a home with relatives in Europe, but they didn't want to raise a mentally disabled youth, his attorneys say. So they put him on a plane to Dulles International Airport, where he arrived in early 2001 at the age of 16 and with a fake passport.

Jarno spent nearly three years in jail as his asylum claim proceeded; at one point, officials lost track of his case, leaving him in jail for nine months without a hearing.

But his asylum bid eventually was taken up by a team of pro-bono lawyers, and his treatment received widespread publicity. More than 70 members of Congress have written to the Department of Homeland Security to support him, and his cause has been supported by Amnesty International and other groups. He was released last year to a home for refugees in York, Pa., where he attends high school.

Charles Miller, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, which oversees the immigration courts, confirmed that Jarno had been denied asylum. He said he had no further information.

However, an official at Homeland Security, which contested Jarno's petition, said the judge issued a 135-page ruling stating that the youth hadn't met the standards for asylum. The judge concluded that the witnesses and evidence presented on his behalf contradicted his claims, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The judge also turned down a petition to stay Jarno's deportation because of the possibility that he could be tortured if he is sent home, the youth's attorney said.