Weeks after Celestin Dima was shackled on a plane and came within hours of being deported to a country where he had never lived, the Burkina Faso native has been granted asylum.
The decision caps a remarkable reversal for the African immigrant, freeing Dima after more than two years in ICE detention. Reopening his case already wiped away the removal order that allowed the government to try to send him elsewhere.
Dima received protection from deportation to his home country, where he’d been persecuted for being gay. Yet he remained caught in a broader legal limbo AZCIR documented earlier this year, which left him and other immigrants stuck in detention despite having such protections.
Dima was granted asylum Sept. 23 after the rule that had blocked him from seeking it was struck down in May. Attorneys say others affected by the rule have begun winning asylum cases, too, though the Trump administration is seeking to reinstate it.
Meanwhile, a separate legal battle is unfolding over the government’s ability to deport immigrants to third countries, as officials attempted to do with Dima. A federal appeals court imposed new protections against such removals in September, only for the U.S. Supreme Court to suspend them days later while it considers the case.
Support AZCIR
Help AZCIR do more to keep you informed.
Prefer to send a check? Mail it to AZCIR: PO Box 3665, Phoenix, AZ 85030
Dima’s future, however, no longer hinges on either legal fight. Now that he’s been granted asylum, years of uncertainty are finally over.
“That is the first time (since arriving) in the United States—it’s the first time I’m happy,” Dima said after his asylum hearing.
The rule that initially made Dima ineligible for asylum was called Circumvention of Lawful Pathways, or CLP. Under the Biden-era policy, people who illegally entered the United States between ports of entry could not qualify for asylum, funneling people like Dima into lesser forms of protection that left them vulnerable to deportation.
Until recently, it wasn’t clear whether asking judges to reopen asylum cases on the basis of the rule’s reversal would be successful. Proceedings can take months or more.
But at Dima’s late September asylum hearing, the Department of Homeland Security did not contest his claim, according to his attorney, Marlene Berroa Rodriguez of Make the Road NY. The nonprofit provides resources to immigrants and other communities.
“What we’ve been saying from the beginning—that the record was clear that he only lost asylum because of the CLP—was what ultimately won the case,” Berroa Rodriguez said.
Sign up. Get engaged.
Get AZCIR’s latest investigations and updates delivered straight into your inbox.
Attorneys representing immigrants previously barred from asylum under CLP have reported similarly uncontested cases, she said, describing it as a departure from the Trump administration’s typical approach.
Anne Peterson, senior counsel at the San Francisco-based Center for Gender & Refugee Studies that helped challenge CLP, has tracked nine cases so far in which immigrants got asylum after previously being denied under the rule. She anticipates the reversal will “give a huge number of people a fair opportunity to apply for asylum,” though that could change if the government succeeds in reviving CLP—an effort now before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Berroa Rodriguez also cautioned that the work required in Dima’s case could make his victory difficult to reproduce broadly.
“It shows how impossible this process is, and how labor-intensive it is,” she said. “How much can we actually replicate that at the pace that the government is going? I don’t know that that’s possible.”
The Trump administration has carried out third-country deportations at a scale previously unseen, removing more than 25,000 people since January 2025.
To accelerate those removals, DHS relied on diplomatic assurances from countries that immigrants sent there wouldn’t face persecution or torture. This allowed U.S. officials to bypass giving immigrants an opportunity to raise those fears before deportation.
Under the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ Sept. 18 ruling, immigrants with final deportation orders became entitled to challenging such removals, including by applying for protection under the Convention Against Torture. Had those safeguards been in place just two months earlier, they might have saved Dima from being put on the deportation flight.
But the new protections lasted less than two weeks. On Sept. 29, the Supreme Court granted the government’s emergency request to continue third-country deportations under existing policy while it reviews the appeals court ruling, with oral arguments scheduled for December.
For Dima, the pending decision no longer carries the same stakes.
His asylum status generally protects him from deportation to a third country and makes him eligible to work in the U.S. In about a year, he can apply for a green card, the first step on a path to citizenship.
It is a stark change from just weeks ago, when Dima was still locked in a Brooklyn detention center after more than two years in immigration custody.
For the first time since arriving in the United States, Dima can begin looking ahead.
Before fleeing Burkina Faso, he worked as a car mechanic. He hopes to do that again.
RELATED
Judges ruled deporting at-risk migrants home could lead to persecution or torture. ICE is detaining them anyway.
At least 120 immigrants were detained for months in Arizona ICE facilities, despite judges barring their deportation home because they would face prosecution or torture, an AZCIR analysis found. Many were held beyond six months as the Trump administration sought to deport them to countries where they had never lived, raising questions about constitutional limits on prolonged detention.
