DHS Supports Asylum for Battered Women Denied Help from Their Home Governments

IMMIGRATION LAW & POLICY

Asylum, Refugee, and Other
Protected Statuses

DHS SUPPORTS ASYLUM FOR BATTERED WOMEN DENIED HELP FROM THEIR HOME GOVERNMENTS
Immigrants' Rights Update, Vol. 18, No. 2, April 2, 2004

The Dept. of Homeland Security has taken the position that asylum should be granted to a woman who was brutally battered by her husband in Guatemala and then denied assistance by the government when she sought help to flee him. The DHS took this position in a brief submitted to Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft in the case of Rodi Alvarado.

The department maintains that not all battered women should be granted asylum but that asylum is appropriate where local authorities refuse to help and the victim’s attempts to flee within the country are unsuccessful. The brief also indicates that this principle would best be established by final regulations—which the DHS and U.S. Dept. of Justice are in the process of finalizing—rather than by issuance of a precedent decision in this case.

The Alvarado case has had a long and fluctuating history. She suffered brutal beatings by her abusive husband and fled Guatemala in fear for her life after local police and courts there refused to intervene on her behalf because they viewed her situation as a “domestic matter.” In the United States, she was granted asylum by an immigration judge. That decision was reversed by the Board of Immigration Appeals in an en banc precedent decision, which was then vacated by Atty. Gen. Janet Reno in one of her last actions before leaving office. Matter of R-A-, 22 I. & N. Dec. 906 (BIA 1999; A.G. 2001).

Reno’s decision remanded the case for reconsideration after regulations on gender-based asylum that were proposed by the Clinton administration are finalized (see “INS Issues Proposed and Final Asylum Regulations,” IMMIGRANTS’ RIGHTS UPDATE, Feb. 28, 2001, p. 1). However, after he was appointed attorney general, Ashcroft took jurisdiction over the case by recertifying the decision. At that time he announced plans both to issue a new decision and to revise the regulations (see “Ashcroft Reverses Reno in Matter of R-A-; Gender-Based Asylum Rules in Jeopardy,” IMMIGRANTS’ RIGHTS UPDATE, Apr. 8, 2003, p. 3).