The Justice Department last month reversed rulings by Trump's attorneys general. That will make it less difficult for victims of domestic abuse or gang violence to gain U.S. refuge.
Starting when she was 5 years old, Areli said, her father raped her and took money from other men so they could do the same. She said he told her she deserved her lot in life because she was “a girl and not the boy he always wanted.”
The rulings by Jeff Sessions and William Barr broke with precedent and overturned decisions made by immigration appellate judges, who had for years allowed asylum claims based on domestic abuse or gang violence. Current Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland’s orders restored the precedent, allowing the possibility of asylum protections for victims of domestic abuse or gang violence.
But when Areli’s mother unexpectedly died three years ago, Areli said she knew she was no longer safe in Guatemala. For years she had gone to police officials to report her father, but they always told her they couldn’t do much because “it was a family dispute.”A few months after burying her mother in the fall of 2018, she and her family fled Guatemala and gave themselves up at a U.S. port of entry near Reynosa, Texas, where they asked for asylum.
The legal argument over who should qualify for asylum hinges on the interpretation of which seekers belong to a “particular social group.” Past administrations had agreed that persons fleeing domestic abuse or gang violence could be regarded as being persecuted on the account of being in a “particular social group.”
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