'Death is waiting for him' [View all]
Source: Washington Post
‘Death is waiting for him’
By Maria Sacchetti
Photos by Carolyn Van Houten
Dec. 6, 2018
On the day he pleaded for his life in federal immigration court, Santos Chirino lifted his shirt and showed his scars.
Judge Thomas Snow watched the middle-aged construction worker on a big-screen television in Arlington, Va., 170 miles away from the immigration jail where Chirino was being held.
In a shaky voice, Chirino described the MS-13 gang attack that had nearly killed him, his decision to testify against the assailants in a Northern Virginia courtroom and the threats that came next. His brother’s windshield, smashed. Strangers snapping their photos at a restaurant. A gang member who said they were waiting for him in Honduras.
“I’m sure they are going to kill me,” Chirino, a married father of two teenagers, told the judge.
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Nearly a year after he was deported, his 18-year-old daughter and 19-year-old son arrived in the Arlington immigration court for their own asylum hearing. They were accompanied by their father’s lawyer, Benjamin Osorio.
“Your honor, this is a difficult case,” Osorio told Judge John Bryant, asking to speed the process. “I represented their father, Santos Chirino Cruz. . . . I lost the case in this courtroom . . . . He was murdered in April.”
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/local/asylum-deported-ms-13-honduras/
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