U.S. authorities have dropped a passport fraud charge against a Chinese mother who said she would be sterilized under China’s “one-child” policy, and she may be allowed to stay in the United States, the
Sun-Sentinel reported Wednesday.
Zuo Mei Ke and another Chinese woman, Feng Zhao, who is claiming religious persecution, are both seeking asylum. They were smuggled out of China using fake Japanese passports and finally arrived in the United States on a cruise ship, the Sun-Sentinel said.
The U.S. attorney’s office last week dismissed indictments against both women.
“The government dropped the charge because it was the right thing to do," Ke’s attorney, Richard Docobo, told the paper. “Zuo Mei Ke was subject to forced sterilization. If she had remained in China, they would have made her life so difficult.”
Ke, 24, left her two children at home and fled China in an attempt to rejoin her husband, who is in Houston also seeking asylum, Docobo said. They hope to bring both children to the United States if they are granted asylum.
Docobo said Ke was threatened with forced sterilization by Chinese authorities after the birth of her second child.
“Forced sterilization is an assault on the human body,” he said, adding that his client “should be welcomed into this country with open arms.”
The other woman, Zhao, 21, was oppressed because of her Christian faith, her lawyer said.
“Feng Zhao was being persecuted for practicing Christianity in her homeland,” her attorney, Jordan Lewin, told the Sun-Sentinel. “She was a victim of physical violence.”
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