Asylum given to couple who feared death

A Congolese couple who claimed they would be tortured or killed if deported to their African homeland has been granted asylum, bringing them one step closer to becoming American citizens.

David and Regina Bakala sobbed and celebrated after an immigration judge in Chicago made the ruling Monday.

"We are very happy, you know, I don't know how to talk," Regina Bakala, 44, said at a news conference at St. Mary Parish in suburban Milwaukee, which supported the couple's efforts. Her husband, David Bakala, 54, later added: "Today is a sunny day."

About 400 children from St. Mary Parish School waved small American flags and held welcome-home signs as the couple and their 7-year-old daughter Lydia and 6-year-old son Christopher walked into the church.

Regina Bakala has fought a deportation order since 1997, when a judge rejected her asylum application. Bakala contends her previous attorney improperly filed the application and omitted claims about the rapes and imprisonment she says she suffered while fighting for democracy in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She would be subject to attack because of that activity if sent back, she said.

Bakala claims government troops raped her for supporting an opposition party before she fled the Congo, formerly known as Zaire, in 1995.

Her husband fled to the U.S. two years later. He claimed he was in a torture chamber for five months for working for a political party and would be harmed if he returned.

The couple has been married for 22 years and their children were born in the United States.

The judge granted David Bakala asylum after his lawyer presented evidence of post traumatic stress disorder. Regina Bakala was granted asylum because they are married, her lawyer Mary Sfasciotti said.

Sister Josephe Marie Flynn led the church's effort to help the family. She said she went to 11 other lawyers before Sfasciotti, of Chicago, took the case.

Sfasciotti said it seemed insurmountable at the start, but publicity and the church's support helped. "I look back and without giving any credit to myself I think it was a miracle," Sfasciotti said.

Flynn said she was in the courtroom when the judge made his ruling. "I just felt the world had been taken off my shoulders and I just started to cry and couldn't stop," she said.

She said a public celebration was planned for April 15.

The couple plans to apply for permanent residency, wait for a green card and then they can apply for citizenship, she said. The whole process can take seven years or more, Sfasciotti said.

"Before we didn't have normal life," Regina Bakala said. "Now we can sleep."

The couple are studying at Milwaukee Area Technical College.

Regina, who was a history teacher in Congo, said she hoped to give back to the church by teaching American history there.

"This will be happy for me, you know, to teach American history," she said. "I'm going to be proud for that."

David was an accountant in Congo and is taking accounting classes.

Neither has ever voted _ and they look forward to it.

"It's going to be a big day then for me, for us," David Bakala said.

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Save Regina campaign: http://www.saveregina.org