Gay Ugandan woman, fearing imprisonment or worse if deported, pleads to stay in US

BOSTON -- Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV kept focusing on the Ugandan woman’s past — her conviction for marriage fraud and a finding that she had committed perjury to avoid punishment.

But the woman’s lawyer pleaded with Saylor to consider the persecution she could face as a lesbian if she were deported to her home country — imprisonment, torture, even death.

“If she is sent back to Uganda and she is killed, shame on us,” Harvey Kaplan said during a hearing Tuesday in federal court in Boston.

The woman, an unauthorized immigrant who has been in federal custody since May 31, sat quietly in green and red prison scrubs as Kaplan told Saylor that he had the authority not only to order her release, but to stay her deportation so she could make her case to stay in the United States, where she has lived since 2001.

Read more: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/07/18/gay-ugandan-woman-fearing-imprisonment-worse-deported-pleads-stay/0swGLsH8dqAQbbxrjZhSlJ/story.html