For the past year, an asylum-seeking family has been separated by the Atlantic Ocean after an alleged road rage incident involving a former Baywatch star landed an 11-year-old boy in a German orphanage and his mother and sister in separate immigration detention centers in California.
In September 2014, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency allegedly acted on a tip to conduct an “immigration raid” at Nicole Albrecht’s home in Pacific Palisades, California. Agents showed up to take both Albrecht and her mother Petra, both of whom overstayed their visas, into immigration detention.
Albrecht believes that the tip came from her neighbor and former Baywatch star Alexandra Paul, who was served a restraining order after the actress allegedly attempted to attack her with a car. A Department of Homeland Security detention report obtained by ThinkProgress indicated that the Los Angeles Fugitive Operations “was forwarded an email message which had been sent to the Los Angeles ERO Outreach mailbox by actress Alexandra Paul.” Meanwhile, Paul disputes the allegation that the tip came from her. Two years ago, several tabloids covered an apparent feud between the two women.
The Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services put Albrecht’s 11-year-old brother Jayson Albrecht in foster care instead of allowing him to stay with their grandmother Anni, who was also in the home.
“I’m emotionally completely wrecked,” Albrecht told ThinkProgress from inside an immigration detention center in California. She has been in detention for at least 11 months now: Two months at the James Musick facility in Irvine and nine more at the detention facility that’s a part of the Santa Ana County Jail.
After an initial six days together in the same detention facility, immigration officials separated the mother-daughter pair, allegedly because they refused to sign deportation documents. Petra has been staying at a detention facility in Otay, California.
It feels like a hurricane came in and destroyed everything.
“It feels like a hurricane came in and destroyed everything,” Albrecht said. “I still have the love of my family in my heart, but you feel completely abused. It feels like someone’s beating you up day and night. It affects you physically, I’m so weak, it drains you.”
Albrecht’s prolonged detention stems in part from her fight to claim asylum in the United States with her mother and brother. In an extraordinarily unusual move, the family is pleading for asylum because they could otherwise be persecuted for homeschooling Jayson in Germany.
Petra chose to homeschool Jayson because the Jewish family experienced anti-Semintic bullying at his school in Germany. A 2014 survey found that one-fourth of Germans are openly anti-Semitic. Petra also wanted to homeschool Jayson because the family believed in “fundamental freedoms” for parents to control their children’s education.
But Germany has banned homeschooling since World War I and requires children to attend public or state-approved private schools. The government persecutes homeschooling parents and guardians with fines, imprisonment, and even forcible removal of children from their families.
The Jugendamt, a branch of the German government, allegedly already raided the Albrecht home once before in 2011. That was when the family came to the United States on a three-month visa waiver program and overstayed their visas.
The asylum plea, while rare, has similar undertones to the situation faced by another asylum-seeking German family, the Romeikes. That family came to the United States in 2008 and fought the U.S. government over the right to homeschool their children. They were ultimately granted “indefinite deferred status,” which allows them to stay in the country permanently.
“We believe that parents have the right to direct their children’s education, but unfortunately a number of countries don’t see it that way,” Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) President Mike Smith said regarding the Romeikes at the time. The HSLDA is an organization which provides advocacy and legal representation for parents who choose to educate their kids at home, and has been instrumental in making homeschooling legal in all 50 states.
“While it is tragic that families should be forced to flee from their home countries, it is even more disturbing that citizens of these countries are singled out for choosing what they believe is best for their children,” Smith added.
Earlier this year, House Republican advanced a bill to grant asylum to up to 500 individuals “fleeing home school persecution” where home schooling is illegal. The bill refers to home schooling as a “particular social group” and indicates that a person is eligible for asylum if he or she is “deemed to have been persecuted for failure or refusal to comply with any law or regulation that prevents the exercise of the individual right of that person to direct the upbringing and education of a child of that person.”
However, the bill also includes a number of provisions to limit asylum claims generally — including prohibiting unaccompanied alien children (UAC), like the ones who crossed the southern U.S. border last year, from applying for asylum if “such child may be removed to a safe third country”; increasing the number of full-time immigration judges and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lawyers; and raising the standards for children to prove that they would be threatened if they were deported.
It’s like someone ripped her child away from her.
Though Jayson had a pending asylum case under his mothers application, in addition to having his own individual, affirmative asylum claim through USCIS, he was extradited back to Germany and is now currently living in a youth orphanage.
“She wants her child back,” Albrecht said in reference to their mother, her voice trembling. “It’s like someone ripped her child away from her.”
Under the Rodriguez v. Robbins class action lawsuit challenging prolonged immigration detention in California, the Department of Homeland Security should release some immigrant detainees on bond after 180 days to allow them to work on their immigration appeal outside of detention. Both Petra and Nicole surpassed the 180 day detention mark in March, yet neither has been released on bond.
Their prolonged detention is not necessarily out of the ordinary. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) found that on average, Rodriguez class members have been detained an average of 404 days.
This piece has been updated to include more information from Los Angeles Fugitive Operations and a comment from Alexandra Paul.