From Turkey Cuba to Mexico to America: A Kurdish Refugee's Journey: THERE ARE MIDDLE EASTERNERS HIDDEN AMONG THE LATIN AMERICANS SEEKING ENTRY AT THE U.S. BORDER. BUT THEY'RE NOT WHO YOU THINK.

• Author: Petti, Matthew

FACED WITH A surge in legal asylum claims on the southern border, the Trump administration has done everything it can to push refugees underground. It has closed ports of entry and strong-armed Mexico into keeping asylum seekers from traveling north. On July 15, the Department of Justice issued an interim rule declaring that anyone who shows up at the southern border "after failing to apply for protection in a third country...through which the alien transited en route to the United States is ineligible for asylum."

The rule was targeted at refugees escaping gang violence and political instability in Central America. During the last year, tens of thousands of people have fled north through Mexico to seek the protection of the United States. But a different group is counting on the same route away from blood-chilling violence in its homeland.

On October 22, 2018, President Donald Trump tweeted that "criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in" with the Central American refugee caravan. His claim was lambasted as groundless fearmongering, and he later admitted that there was "no proof of anything." But unbeknownst to either the president or his critics, a group of Middle Eastern refugees had arrived at the southern border--though they were neither terrorists nor criminals.

Hundreds of Kurdish refugees have recently made their way to the United States, most of them from Turkey, where Kurds are caught in a near civil war. For those who manage to get out, their best shot at safety is often a perilous journey through Latin America to the United States. Many have been able to gain asylum and thrive here. But others have waited months, trapped in limbo as their cases slowly make their way through a legal system that is increasingly hostile to asylum seekers.

Now the administration is seeking to close the Kurds' route to safety once and for all. The American Civil Liberties Union is suing to stop the interim rule, but the case could take months, and the outcome is uncertain.

Ali, Murat, Dozan, Riza, and Arslan all fled Turkey for Latin America in the later months of 2018. (Their names have been changed for the safety of their families still in Turkey.) They are part of a slow trickle of Kurds traveling halfway around the world to ask for a safe haven in the United States. All five were eventually granted asylum. Others have not been so lucky.

'UNDER SURVEILLANCE' FOR 'THOUGHTCRIMES'

MOST OF THE Kurdish asylum seekers are fleeing a slow-burning war between the Turkish government and a militant group called the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. While it has received less attention than the wars in neighboring Syria and Iraq, the decadeslong conflict in Turkey has recently flared up again, making life extremely difficult for Kurds in the region.

From the beginning of the 20th century, Turkish nationalists have banned the Kurdish language and targeted the mostly rural Kurdish population for forced assimilation. (Although Turks and Kurds practice the same forms of Islam, the Kurds' unique language and cultural practices set them apart.) In 1984, as the Cold War destabilized the region, the PKK launched an uprising with the goal of creating an independent state of Kurdistan. The Turkish government responded with an armed crackdown.

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program in Sweden estimates that the Kurdish rebellion and the Turkish response have killed 31,268 people since 1989. In 1992, Human Rights Watch (HRW) documented war crimes by both sides, including collective punishment, "disappearances, brutal torture and other violations of human rights."

Ali, Murat, and Dozan grew up in Agn Province, near the border with Iran and Armenia. After the PKK killed six Turkish soldiers in September 1992, the army attacked civilian houses in Agri with gunfire and grenades. "As a result, Kurds have been leaving the southeast in the thousands and moving to other areas in Turkey," HRW reported at the time.

Murat and his cousin Dozan were among the Kurds who left for predominantly non-Kurdish cities in western Turkey to escape the violence and poverty of the 1990s. But the conflict has followed them.

Under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish government began a "peace process" with the PKK in 2013. The talks broke down in 2015 during a bitterly polarized election year, and both sides took up arms once again. According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, at least 3,572 people have been killed since 2015.

To make matters worse, a group of (non-Kurdish) army officers attempted to overthrow Erdogan in a failed coup d'etat in July 2016, sending the state into spasms of paranoia. The Erdogan administration responded by declaring a state of emergency and using counterterrorism laws "to detain individuals and seize assets, including those of media companies, charities, businesses, pro-Kurdish groups accused of supporting the PKK, and individuals alleged to be associated with" Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim televangelist accused of ordering the military mutiny, according to a 2018 U.S. State Department report.

Metin Serbest, the Chicago-based lawyer who represented Ali, Murat, and Dozan in their asylum cases, claims that many dissidents have been unofficially "marked" by counterterrorism agencies in Turkey. Kurds in particular are constantly "under surveillance," he says, for what he calls "thought-crimes."

Ali, who had moved west after some of his cousins found construction jobs there, came to...