DaytonDailyNews.com

WASHINGTON — If she's elected to Congress, Democrat Sharen Neuhardt says one of her goals will be reforming the nation's immigration laws, particularly those that grant asylum to refugees who would risk their lives were they to be sent back to their native lands.

The 7th District candidate brings a personal perspective to the issue.

Since 2002, a Rwandan refugee — in this country illegally after his first application for asylum was denied without his knowledge — has lived on Neuhardt's farm just outside Yellow Springs.

Neuhardt considers the man, Ishema Umuhoza, like her son, and is fighting to get him asylum.

"Eight-hundred-thousand people were murdered in a 100-day period," she said. "My family and I are lucky Ishema was not one of them."

But the campaign manager for her Republican opponent, state Sen. Steve Austria of Beavercreek, views Neuhardt's quest differently.

"Harboring an illegal immigrant with a criminal record is a serious matter," said Brad Mascho. "We will reserve judgment on this until all the facts have come to light."

Umuhoza, 26, has been found guilty of at least four traffic violations — mostly driving without a license — since 2001, and was issued three warrants for failing to appear in those traffic cases. He's also had a number of other brushes with law enforcement. He was found guilty of public intoxication in 2005 and has a current active warrant in Dayton Municipal Court for failing to appear for a 2006 public intoxication charge.

He was arrested last month after a couple called Yellow Springs police to report a man, apparently intoxicated, lying in the street. Police cited Umuhoza with disorderly conduct.

"He has a problem with getting arrested," said Brendan Buck of the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee.

Neuhardt said many of these cases — such as not showing up to court — are likely the result of Umuhoza's naivete about U.S. bureaucracy. She was angry with Umuhoza about his recent arrest, she said, but is furious with the Republicans.

"They make it sound like he's some awful illegal immigrant who's been on a rampage since he got here," she said. "That's stupid. He's a wonderful young man who went out and drank, like a lot of other people do, and then walked home."

Umuhoza attended Colonel White High School and then, with the help of an anonymous Dayton philanthropist, Chaminade-Julienne. He graduated from the University of Dayton in 2005. The Neuhardts knew Umuhoza through their daughter, Ann, and invited him to stay with them at Christmas in 2002 after learning that he had nowhere else to go.

A Hutu, Umuhoza is the son of diplomats who were close to Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, who was assassinated in 1994. He was separated from his parents at age 11 when they fled the country and, according to documents filed in Umuhoza's immigration case, were afraid to return because of their friendship with Habyarimana.

At a refugee camp, Umuhoza found a friend of his mother, Cecile Ntawukulilyayo, who pretended to be his aunt in order to protect him.

She brought him to Dayton along with her son in 1998, and Umuhoza didn't find out until years later that her application for asylum had been denied.

After Umuhoza came to live with them, Neuhardt and her husband, Dave, both attorneys, began working to reopen his application for asylum. They've won a partial victory. In late August, a federal magistrate recommended to a federal judge that current immigration laws are unconstitutional as applied to Umuhoza. The government has until Oct. 15 to file objections.