DENVER – A Denver-based federal appeals court has ruled immigration officials were justified in deporting a student from Ghana who was jailed on a rape charge and later acquitted because he was unable to attend school while incarcerated.
Daniel Awuku-Asare came to the U.S. in 2012 to study at Saint Leo University in Florida on an F-1 student visa and was accepted as a transfer student in 2017 at Rhema Bible Training College in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. He was arrested two weeks after his acceptance, charged with first-degree rape and incarcerated for 13 months before a jury acquitted him, according to Tuesday’s ruling from a three-judge panel at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.
Awuku-Asare’s visa required him to maintain a full course of studies at an accredited institution. Awuku-Asare argued that his arrest and incarceration were beyond his control and he did not willingly violate the terms of his visa. However, the appeals court said the law does not require that someone actively do something to violate the visa requirements, just that they fail to meet them.
The ruling did not include details about the allegations against Awuku-Asare or his trial. Edgar Chavarria, a University of Denver law student who got involved in the case last year and argued the case before the court through the school’s Immigration Law & Policy Clinic did not have details about the criminal case. He said the Oklahoma criminal justice system was not at fault in the case, just the federal immigration system.
Awuku-Asare was deported in July 2019 and is now living in Ghana where he has been unable to find work and said he has had to beg to buy food, Chavarria said. Awuku-Asare worked as a teacher before studying in the U.S., and is trying to continue his studies abroad but said has been unable to get scholarships to study law at institutions that have accepted him in the United Kingdom. He has also applied to study at several U.S. universities in the fall but is barred from returning to the country for 10 years after his deportation since the appeals court upheld his removal.
Awuku-Asare said through his lawyer that the ruling threatens “to destroy every educational and career aspiration” he dreamed of.
His student lawyers and advisers are considering their options to appeal the decision, which include asking all of the judges for the appeals court to reconsider the case, Chavarria said.
