is a Romanian national who illegally entered the United States

through Mexico and was arrested by INS border patrol agents on February 22, 2000.

Despite his claim that he was in detention for three weeks following arrest, the official

records indicate that Bortas posted a $5,000 bond and was released from custody two

days later, on February 24, 2000.1 When the INS instituted removal proceedings against

Bortas, his counsel indicated that he planned to file an asylum application. However, when

the first hearing was convened in the immigration court on April 10, 2001, an application

had not yet been filed. The attorney for the government pointed out, in response to the

petitioner’s request for a continuance, that Bortas had already missed the one-year

deadline for filing an application for asylum. As a result, the immigration judge continued

thethe immigration judge asked whether Bortas had explained the

reason for the delay in greater detail anywhere in the document. Bortas’s attorney replied

that he had not.


       In his asylum application, Bortas indicated that he was persecuted as the result of

his attempt to protect the workers in a state-owned mine in Romania, where he was

employed as a geologist, from the effects of radiation emanating from mining operations.

He reported being beaten up by security guards from the mine on three occasions, listing

these incidents as occurring in December 1998, February 1999, and December 2000, even

though the latter was an impossible date in view of Bortas’s arrival in this country in

February 2000. The application also reflected that after the third incident, Bortas left the

mine area and moved