Julie Johnson

TACOMA, Wash. — Locked away in a detention center in Tacoma, Wash., Rosemary Okere, a Nigerian journalist, refuses to give up her and her son’s bid for asylum in the United States.

On one side she faces death at the hands of her husband’s killers if she is deported to Nigeria. But every day she spends behind bars — she’s been held for nearly one and a half years — separates her from her teenage son, who is living with relatives outside of Tacoma. The cost of her prolonged absence is a deepening depression that led him to try to end his life last summer.

On the other side is Nigeria, a country her son doesn’t remember and where her life fell apart. She fears the impact of uprooting him from the only community he calls home and moving to a tumultuous and unfamiliar country.

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