Refugees on the Run, Pilgrims Without a Home

This past September, Azerbaijani immigration authorities conducted a raid of the home of Catholic Pakistani asylum-seeker Michael D’Souza in Baku. They apprehended Michael’s wife, Rosemary, and two of their children, his son Miles (age 16) and his daughter Reine (age 10), and took them to an immigration detention center. Michael and his older daughter, Rochelle (age 23), were not at home during the raid, which followed a June ruling in an Azerbaijani court that the D’Souzas had overstayed their visas and were now living there illegally.

Michael’s story has appeared regularly in the pages of the NOR for almost a decade, and it served as one of the primary inspirations for my book The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Lands (2021). Over that period, Michael and his family spent several years as asylum-seekers in Thailand, which included two long and grueling stints in a Thai immigration detention center. Forcibly removed from Thailand, they returned to Pakistan, where again Michael was violently assaulted by Muslim militants. His attempts to flee with his family to Europe and Sri Lanka both ended in failure. For the past few years, the D’Souzas have resided in Azerbaijan, where they were able to find some peace, as well as a little income — Rosemary and Rochelle worked in an Indian restaurant for the equivalent of $10 per day.

In late 2023 I petitioned NOR readers (as well as those of CrisisMagazine.com) for help raising the $50,000 necessary to cover the expenses to open an application for the D’Souzas with the Canadian government’s office of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), which welcomes asylum-seekers who have a formal sponsor and sufficient funds to ensure they can begin a new life in Canada. NOR and Crisis readers proved more than generous, and my in-laws (who managed the GoFundMe page where the donations were collected) raised not only enough to cover the application fee but a little extra to support the D’Souzas during their time in Azerbaijan. An IRCC application, which includes background checks, can take up to two years to be adjudicated.

Obviously, the detention of three members of Michael’s family throws a wrench in these plans. At first, Michael was able to communicate via phone with Rosemary. For security reasons, they’ve stopped doing that. In the days after the raid, Azerbaijani immigration authorities visited nearby restaurants, asking patrons and workers if they’d seen Michael and Rochelle. Thus, to evade the authorities, father and daughter presently are living in hiding far from Baku. My in-laws regularly send them money for their expenses.