Last week the Department of Homeland Security released Malik Jarno, a mentally disabled teenager, to the custody of the International Friendship House, a refugee shelter, in York, Pennsylvania. A child orphan who fled persecution in Guinea, Jarno was apprehended upon his arrival and detained.

Jarno has been released after more than 35 months in detention pending the outcome of new asylum proceedings that have been ordered by the Board of Immigration Appeals.

The Board of Immigration Appeals agreed to reopen his case on Monday, December 22, in part based on new evidence from experts in Guinea who confirmed that Jarno would be in real danger if deported to Guinea where he would be a homeless orphan subject to abuse on the streets of his home country.

The lawyer representing Jarno, Christopher Nugent, stated that the teenager had suffered every imaginable problem that a child could be subjected to in the immigration system and that the system has not considered that some detainees are children first and should be treated as such.

In 2000, Jarno fled to France from Guinea after government forces killed his father who was a Muslim cleric and political activist.  When he was fifteen, immigration officials detained him at Dulles international Airport as he tried to enter the country with a fake French passport.  He was held for eight months in adult jails before seeing an immigration judge to apply for asylum.  Jarno later sued Piedmont Aid in central Virginia, claiming he was severely beaten by guards and assaulted with pepper spray; he lost the civil suit.