In New York immigration court, asylum roulette
Tears streaked Meizi Liu’s face in 2003 as she told an immigration judge in New York of being forcibly sterilized in China. The judge, Jeffrey S. Chase, had won awards as a human rights advocate before his appointment to the bench in 1995. But now he had 1,000 pending cases, and he had heard it all before. He insisted that she was lying, ridiculed her story and, when she would not recant, denied her petition for asylum. NINA BERNSTEIN in the New York Times.