Amos Yee’s dogged chase for political asylum is far from over — US government attorneys are appealing against an immigration judge’s decision to grant the teen refugee status.
What this means is that it could be months before Yee will ever be released from detention. An Associated Press report states that the subversive teen blogger remains in detention at a Wisconsin jail.
By now, the 18-year-old will have been jailed for about four months in the United States. He was detained by US authorities when he arrived in Chicago airport in December last year after they found out that he was intending to apply for asylum on grounds that he faced persecution in Singapore for his opinions.
He was jailed twice after insulting the island’s late leader Lee Kuan Yew and religious groups on his YouTube channel — convictions that critics claim were carried out to silence him.
Yee’s efforts to escape Singapore bore fruit last month when a Chicago immigration judge ruled that Yee “has a well-founded fear of future persecution” and granted the teen asylum.
Alas, the US government had the right to appeal the decision, and that it did. AP reports that the case is now before the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the final verdict could take months.
Grossman Law — the firm representing Yee thus far — has repeatedly stated that it’s securing his release from detention, but it seems that the Singaporean will remain behind bars for quite some time.
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