Sudanese refugee spent months held in Mexico, trying to go home

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske

A Sudanese refugee who disappeared in March and surfaced in Mexico City in April has returned to Syracuse.

Sept 17, 2005 (SYRACUSE, USA) — Samuel Manyang, 23, flew from Mexico City to Syracuse on Sept. 2 after months living in Mexican motels and in an immigration detention center, he said. Catholic Charities, the refugee resettlement agency that brought Manyang to Syracuse from a refugee camp in Kenya, paid for his ticket from the agency’s emergency fund.

Rep. James Walsh’s office helped Catholic Charities convince U.S. immigration officials in Mexico to allow Manyang to return to Syracuse, said Brian Walton executive director at Catholic Charities. Manyang should be able to stay in Syracuse despite violating the terms of his visa by leaving the country, Walton said.

“Everything that we know at this point would leave us to believe he’s going to stay,” he said.

Manyang came to Syracuse in 2001 from Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, where he lived for 14 years. One of the “Lost Boys,” he was forced to flee home and family during Sudan’s civil war, traveling across Kenya and Ethiopia. The week before he had to leave the refugee camp, his mother arrived.

In Syracuse, Manyang found a job at McIntosh Box & Pallet Co.; roommates Samuel Kuach, 36, and John Kur, 26, also from Sudan; and an apartment on Butternut Street, but not a home. It was too cold in Syracuse, and he didn’t feel comfortable, he said. He bought a car, then totaled it in an accident in October 2003.

Manyang said he applied to U.S. immigration officials for a green card, which would allow him to travel outside of the United States, but the process takes up to three years. Last year, he also applied for travel documents that would allow him to leave the country.

In February 2004, he talked to his mother by phone. He was homesick, he said. He tried to price plane tickets to Kenya and Sudan at Hancock Airport. But he got into a fight with a desk

clerk, he said, and was taken to jail.

He thought his immigration applications were taking too long, he said, and came up with a new plan: Lose his visa, travel to Mexico and get deported to Sudan.

“I thought it was like the U.S.A.,” he said while sitting with his roommates last week, “Sometimes when you come without paperwork, they send you back.”

Said Kuach: “That is a poor decision.”

Manyang quit his job and took a bus to Arizona. From there, he crossed into Mexico to the northern town of Matamoros, then took another bus south to Tapachula, on the Guatemalan border.

Border agents demanded a passport. Manyang didn’t have one – he had left his visa paperwork in Syracuse, he said, lost his driver’s license and Social Security card. So they sent him to a detention center in Mexico City, he said, the one Spanish word he remembers: “Migracion.” There he stayed in a cell, fed and sheltered, but lonely among the Spanish-speaking detainees.

Manyang said he shuttled between “migracion” and motels for the next few months. He liked the warm weather, he said, and didn’t mind that he couldn’t understand the people. He saw them eating a lot of “American food,” from hamburgers to macaroni, but also strange new foods made from ground corn wrapped in corn husks.

A few spoke English. If they approached him on the street, he answered their questions.

“They say, ‘Where do you come from?’ I say, ‘I come from New York, I’m thinking of going to Sudan.’ ”

He called his roommates and Catholic Charities once in a while, to ask for money. They promised to help him if he returned to Syracuse.

Instead, Manyang tried to flee each time he was released – once to another part of Mexico City, once to the port of Veracruz, where he thought he could find a ship bound for Africa. Each time, he said, he was detained and returned to detention in Mexico City, “Not going to Africa, just suffering.”

“It’s very hard over there in Mexico when you say you want to go back to your country, a different continent,” he said.

Finally, he decided to fly back to Syracuse. Upon arrival, he discovered that he was granted permission to leave the country. He moved back in with his roommates and talks about saving for a trip to see his mother, although he needs a new job.

“I want to go and talk to her,” he said, “And then I come back.”

(The Post-Standard)