BOISE, Idaho -- Gregory Bastos remembers being kidnapped along with a friend and beaten by Venezuelan forces for his political activism, not knowing whether he would die. The experience was traumatizing, he said, sitting at a cafe in downtown Boise with his wife, Oriana Bastos.

The Venezuelan-born couple, both 27, didn’t wait long before they crossed the border to Colombia, took a bus to the capital, Bogotá, and flew to Mexico. The two turned themselves in at the U.S. border to request asylum and were detained briefly. Since then, they’ve been waiting four years for an asylum court date.

When a hearing was set for April 10, the two Idaho residents felt like there was an end in sight, finally. But their slot was canceled a week beforehand because of a judge reassignment, they said, plunging them back into uncertainty.

It’s been a long road, starting from nothing. Away in the U.S., Oriana missed the death of her grandmother back home, she said, choking up. Oriana and her husband were both attorneys in South America, but have worked in restaurants and at a hospital locally. She said they’ve struggled in a different culture, with a different language and with people who aren’t always welcoming. And since President Donald Trump retook office, the couple has been dealing with his rhetoric and the ever-changing news cycle.

“He doesn’t have any idea what it means to be an immigrant,” Oriana said, in Spanish. “It’s life or death.”

Asylum is an internationally recognized protection for people who face persecution in their home countries. The process has long been time consuming. But with the Trump administration’s hardening attitude toward immigrants, local lawyers said asylum-seekers are struggling with a more hostile bureaucracy and a chaotic environment.

Trump and other members of his administration have said they are trying to make America safer by deporting people and improving security at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Gregory and Oriana aren’t alone in dealing with the judge’s reassignment. Idaho cases are heard in Portland, according to local immigration lawyers, but a Washington state immigration judge used to hear Idaho cases remotely.

Then scheduled hearings for Idaho cases started getting canceled this spring, said Neal Dougherty, a Nampa-based immigration attorney with Ramirez-Smith Law. No official explanation was given. Department of Justice spokesperson Kathryn Mattingly did not answer questions about why those cases were canceled.

Dougherty said, after the reassignment, court dates are now scheduled as far out as 2030. In the past, his clients would wait just two or three years, he said. Some people, like Gregory and Oriana, are still waiting to be rescheduled, he said.

Such legal challenges to local asylum-seekers affect more than just Latino communities. People from many other nationalities who are trying to establish legal residency or U.S. citizenship are in the same dilemma.

Eddie Hamdard, 30, a native of Afghanistan, received a path to U.S. citizenship through a special immigration visa program after he assisted the American military during its 20-year war in his home country. He arrived to the U.S. in 2015 and became naturalized in 2020. But he has witnessed past U.S. pledges to grant legal status to his immediate family members stall, and grown more and more frustrated by evolving policies, including sudden changes once Trump reentered the White House in January.

Hamdard, who lives in Boise, has been able to navigate a patchwork of U.S. immigration systems to find routes for his mother, sister and older brother to join him in Idaho. But the status of those applications long remained in flux. And Hamdard has remained unable to find a successful path for his sister’s husband.

The lack of stability and reliable help and information over the years has severely impacted his and his family’s mental health, he told the Statesman.

“My brother feels abandoned by the system he once trusted, while my brother-in-law faces life-threatening risks daily in Afghanistan,” Hamdard said last month. “Many Afghans perceive U.S. immigration policies as humiliating and dismissive of their sacrifices during U.S. military operations, amplifying feelings of betrayal within our community.”

Venezuelan couple in Idaho seeks asylum

Gregory and Oriana’s home state of Táchira, in western Venezuela on the Colombian border, is well-known for its longtime opposition to the country’s regime. Both of them protested against the government as part of the political party Acción Democrática.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro took office in 2013 and has presided over the largest economic decline outside of wartime in decades. His critics say he stole an election last year and has imprisoned, tortured and kidnapped people. Millions of Venezuelans have already left in the years since his ascension. Recently, several members of his opposition fled to the U.S., and the top opposition leader remains in hiding.

Inside Venezuela, Gregory and Oriana said they met as law students at a local university. They got married in the U.S. in 2022.

“I believe that us Venezuelans, we don’t lose faith,” Oriana said, tearing up. “That one day it will change and we can go back once again.”

Now to be lawyers again, they’d have to save up to attend law school in the U.S. It’s very expensive, they said, especially amid all of their other expenses, including taxes, vehicle costs and sending money home.

A dangerous country alone isn’t enough for people to qualify for asylum, said J.J. Despain, managing attorney for the Wilner & O’Reilly Boise office. People have to show specific and credible fears to receive protection in the U.S.. Immigrants can either apply on their own or raise asylum as a defense to deportation.

For many hoping to stay in the country, asylum is their only legal option, driving up the number of applications, Despain said. The U.S. has just under 2 million open asylum cases, according to the Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Asylum is under the purview of Congress, not the executive branch. But that didn’t stop Trump from issuing orders with immediate impacts on asylum-seekers.

In his first days, Trump signed an executive order prohibiting people from seeking asylum through the border with Mexico. His administration also shut down a mobile app called CBP One, which had allowed asylum-seekers to schedule appointments. The administration then canceled the legal status of around 1 million people who had previously entered the country using the app, including some who had pending asylum applications.

A recent memo laid out a plan for judges to dismiss asylum cases without a hearing.

“All that matters is if you’re an immigrant, you’re an enemy,” Oriana said.

Trump campaigned on mass deportations and stopping the flow of immigrants into the country. In recent years, public opinion in the U.S. has shifted to a more anti-immigration stance, according to recent Gallup national polling.

That changing public opinion is part of what Gregory, Oriana and Hamdard said they find so discouraging about the current political climate.

“The systemic delays and anti-immigration policies have left my family in chaos — struggling to navigate complex legal processes while facing employment barriers and emotional distress,” Hamdard said.

U.S. promises citizenship pathway for Afghan families

Following the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. launched an assault on the Taliban, Afghanistan’s ruling regime, when it refused to turn over members of the al-Qaida terrorist network responsible for the bombings led by Osama bin Laden. The U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan would last nearly 20 years — a decade after American special forces killed bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan in 2011.

In 2020, during Trump’s first term, his administration pushed for an end to the U.S. conflict and brokered a deal to exit the country the next year. President Joe Biden followed through on his predecessor’s agreement for full withdrawal of all American forces in August 2021, which led to the immediate collapse of the Afghan government to the Taliban, now again in power.

The U.S. offered Afghans who helped America’s military operations the chance at U.S. citizenship for them and their families. Tens of thousands of Afghans pursued the special immigration process and escaped with the exit of U.S. forces, fearing retaliation up to death with the return of Taliban rule.

“These people are here for a reason, and that is: One, they’re not feeling safe to return to their home country; two, they’re here to take advantage of what was promised to them,” Hamdard said. “And that was the pledge — that we’re going to protect our partners and allies by providing them a legal pathway to citizenship.”

Hamdard, who said he helped provide security and telecommunication services to the U.S. military in western Afghanistan, found his way out years before the end of the armed conflict. Others in his same situation provided interpreter services or were members of the Afghan military. But Hamdard has run into repeated obstacles trying to secure immigration benefits for his family, as have other Afghan refugees to the U.S.

Hamdard’s brother, Ahmad Shoaib Hamdard, 33, arrived to the U.S. and trained to work and be licensed as a commercial long-haul truck driver. He applied for asylum and was interviewed in 2021, Eddie Hamdard said.

While he awaited an asylum decision, his brother was able to remain in the U.S. under the Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, program. The Trump administration plans to end that program, including for Afghans, by mid-July, yet again leaving many legal immigrants with narrowed options to stay in the U.S.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration shuttered the office of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services ombudsman, in efforts to implement the president’s policies to limit immigration into the U.S., according to several news reports. Hamdard’s brother’s asylum case had already been approved for ombudsman review, Eddie Hamdard said, only to have that possible avenue also blocked with the executive action.

“The ombudsman was really helpful when you had people who are frozen in administrative processing or just clearly erroneous legal determinations,” said Dougherty, one of the immigration lawyers. “You only need to use them when there’s a huge problem.”

Finally, after nearly four years — with the help of the office of U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho — Ahmad Shoaib Hamdard received word this month that U.S. immigration services approved his asylum application. The timing could not have been better, Eddie Hamdard said, because the end of the TPS program for Afghan nationals could have forced his brother to return to their home country.

Although years of U.S. immigration hurdles have now been resolved for Hamdard and his immediate family, his brother-in-law remains in Afghanistan with seemingly no way out. Countless other Afghans possibly eligible for legal status in the U.S., but left behind with its military withdrawal, remain in the same situation.

“This shouldn’t be a painful, prolonged process, which requires congressional inquiries all the time,” Hamdard said. “If you’re advocating for legal immigration, if you’re advocating for justice to those who have served for the U.S. government, then we need to be able to be more precise in what we are doing and how we are doing it. I think we have been fortunate enough to be able to accomplish what we have accomplished so far, but my mind, my heart goes out to people who don’t have the resources.”

‘In limbo’ as U.S. halts asylum cases

The U.S. immigration system is already plagued by a lack of resources, Dougherty said. It takes a lot of time for Idaho asylum-seekers to get interviews, he said, and all of his clients are terrified of being detained or deported without receiving due process.

“The entire disposition of the government toward immigrants right now is to treat them like criminals,” Dougherty said.

Now in Idaho, Gregory said in Spanish that he feels lucky he was just beaten and let go. Others he knows didn’t have the same luck. He can’t go back home, he said, even though he misses his family.

One day, maybe he can return, when Venezuela has a different government, he said. But for now, Gregory and Oriana will keep waiting for their next court date, hoping another judge will take their case. They have permission to work, but not the certainty of asylum protection.

“I’m in limbo,” Gregory said. “I’m legally here, but I’m not legal-legal.”

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