Between Iraq and a safe place

"If I smell like I lived here in America, I’m dead. No question about it," the Iraq native says.
Yousif, 30, is among about 600 Iraqi Christians living in the Detroit area who are facing deportation to their war-torn homeland. Yousif came to this country five years ago seeking refuge from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. By that point, Iraq’s minority Christian population — Chaldeans and Assyrians who speak the ancient Aramaic language — and other non-Arabs had suffered for decades under a program known as "Arabization." Many were forced from their homes and relocated; others had to change their names as part of an attempt to undermine their cultural identity.
Yousif says he sustained an even harsher fate, claiming he was tortured by government agents after initially refusing to join Saddam’s ruling Ba’ath Party. He fled shortly afterward, and was smuggled through Turkey and South America before entering this country illegally in 2000. He’s been seeking asylum here ever since.
Now, with Hussein sitting in a jail cell and a new government elected, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is trying to deport Yousif and other Iraqi Christians seeking asylum. There are no figures indicating how many such people nationwide are being affected.