A new ruling issued Monday by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions stands to put women who are fleeing gender-based or gang violence in their home countries in danger by turning them away from the nation’s borders.
In short, immigrants under the threat of domestic violence will not qualify for asylum in the United States, a move that has left critics baffled by what dangers do qualify for protection. The decision is likely to affect tens of thousands of people hoping to have their immigration cases reviewed, and is a particularly blow to women who have come to this country to escape instances of violence.
“The mere fact that a country may have problems effectively policing certain crimes — such as domestic violence or gang violence — or that certain populations are more likely to be victims of crime, cannot itself establish an asylum claim,” Sessions wrote in his 31-page opinion.
Sessions came to this conclusion after personally intervening in Matter of A-B-, a case that revolves around a woman from El Salvador, who had said she had been sexually, emotionally and physically abused by her husband for more than 15 years. She had been granted asylum through the Board of Immigration Appeals on the grounds that, as a woman unable to leave a violent relationship or receive protection from her government, she had suffered persecution related to her particular social group.
However, Sessions reversed the board’s ruling, saying it had “been wrongly decided.” His move represents a much tougher stance on immigration and a sharp change in previous policies that had been more sympathetic to survivors of domestic violence since 2014, when a kind of precedent had been set by the case of a Guatemalan woman named Aminta Cifuentes. She was granted asylum after describing how her husband had burned her with acid and punched her—even when she was pregnant— for over a decade. After Cifuentes, other victims who had left their countries shared similar arguments for why they should receive asylum protections in the U.S.
Immigrant rights activists have pointed out that Sessions’ ruling will hit hardest when it comes to women fleeing areas like Central America and parts of Mexico, where gang and gender-based violence is especially high. According to a 2015 United Nations report, a “surging tide of violence” has swept over countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, forcing thousands of women and children to leave their homes every month. As part of the report, women told the UN they faced violence—such as rape, assault, extortion and threats by gangs—on a daily basis. Escaping to the U.S. and asking for asylum was often a final recourse for such victims
“What this decision does is yank us all back to the Dark Ages of human rights and women’s human rights and the conceptualization of it,” Karen Musalo, a defense lawyer on the case, told the New York Times.
