500 signatures reached
To: Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Tell ICE: Release Etty Tham from detention!
Release Etty Tham, who has been in ICE custody for more than 100 days since she was detained in a border patrol checkpoint in New Hampshire on May 27, 2018. Etty seeks asylum in the US because of religious and ethnic persecution in her home country of Indonesia.
Why is this important?
Etty Tham arrived to New Hampshire in 2000, fleeing persecution in her native Indonesia because of her Christian faith and her Chinese ethnicity. She made every effort to seek asylum in the US but to date has been unable to secure a legal status.
For nearly twenty years, she has lived and worked in the Seacoast of New Hampshire, raising her two daughters and serving as a daily caregiver for her two young grandchildren.
Etty was detained in May 2018 in a Customs and Border Protection checkpoint in NH, and since that time she has served more than 100 days in immigration detention. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seeks to deport her immediately, but a federal court ruling on September 11 has given her a last-minute and temporary reprieve.
Etty's terrible fear of return to Indonesia, the presence of her loved ones here in Dover and Portsmouth, her deteriorating health, and her pending legal petition are compelling reasons for her to be released immediately from immigrant detention and allowed to remain in safety in her New Hampshire home.