Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, UC Hastings College of Law
In 1999, following her groundbreaking legal victory in Matter of Kasinga, Karen Musalo founded the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS) to meet the needs of asylum seekers fleeing gender-based violence. Since its inception, CGRS has helped thousands of advocates around the country secure protection for their clients. CGRS has also continued to litigate high-impact cases like Kasinga, achieving positive precedential decisions that have advanced the law for women, children, and LGBT individuals fleeing persecution in their home countries.
CGRS envisions a world where no refugee is denied her right to protection under U.S. and international law. We strive to achieve this vision by: 1) providing technical assistance and training to attorneys representing asylum seekers; 2) tracking and monitoring the adjudication of asylum cases nationwide to expose disparities and bias in decision-making; 3) undertaking strategic litigation to advance sound asylum laws and defend due process rights; 4) engaging in policy advocacy to align U.S. policies with international human rights norms; and 5) conducting international human rights fact-finding to document human rights abuses and address the root causes that drive migration.
THE CASE
-
In 2018 U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions intervened in an asylum case involving a domestic violence survivor from El Salvador known as Matter of A-B-, certifying the case to himself for reconsideration. CGRS immediately joined the applicant’s legal team and began rallying attention to her case. In June Sessions issued a misguided and legally incorrect decision in A-B-, reversing a previous grant of asylum to our client and casting doubt on the viability of all asylum claims based on domestic violence, gang brutality, and other forms of persecution perpetrated by nongovernment actors. The ruling marked a clear attempt by Sessions to shut down access to asylum for the vast majority of individuals seeking protection at our southern border.
CGRS is now launching a multifaceted campaign to reverse Sessions’ decision in Matter of A-B-, including litigation as well as nationally coordinated public advocacy. With support from the Barbara McDowell and Gerald S. Hartman Foundation, CGRS will challenge Sessions’ ruling in Matter of A-B- before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. We will work to secure a positive, precedential decision that upholds the right of women, children, and families fleeing persecution to seek asylum. To bolster our efforts we will coordinate a national amicus strategy in support of our arguments. A positive decision from the Fourth Circuit on this issue would improve the ability of asylum seekers to secure protection in the United States and restore the progress that has been achieved on behalf of those fleeing nongovernment persecution.
-
Recently CGRS, working in coordination with other advocacy groups and private counsel, secured a huge victory in the landmark decision Matter of A-R-C-G-. The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) in A-R-C-G- formally recognized for the first time that domestic violence can serve as the basis for asylum. CGRS laid the groundwork for A-R-C-G- not only directly through an influential amicus brief filed with the BIA, but also through years of painstaking work in every pivotal gender-based asylum case considered by the BIA, from Kasinga onward, and in countless individual cases.
As part of an overall strategy to build upon the landmark A-R-C-G- ruling, we will litigate a domestic violence case, which we refer to herein as Matter of A-, pending before the Eloy Immigration Court in Arizona. We believe that this individual case in one of the nation’s most hostile immigration courts will make a meaningful difference for detained women who seek protection from domestic violence. Our involvement will also contribute toward positive precedent and an expansive application of A-R-C-G- in the immigration courts.
The Eloy Immigration Court hears the cases of women refugees who are detained at the nearby Eloy Detention Center. We will seek to ensure that immigration judges and government attorneys engage in fair and correct application of A-R-C-G- within the Eloy jurisdiction, where judges have among the highest denial rates in the nation.
Together, the four Eloy immigration judges average over 94% denials in asylum cases, notwithstanding a nationwide denial rate of only ~50% in asylum cases. Both the University of Arizona and a local legal services provider, the Florence Project, have alerted us that the high denial rates apply also to women raising domestic violence claims, even following A-R-C-G-. Both groups have requested that we mentor and assist attorneys representing women in detention at Eloy.
With the support of this request, we plan to co-counsel in Matter of A-, a case currently pending before an Eloy immigration judge, who has a denial rate of 94% (among the highest in the nation), and to develop through that case model pleadings and a legal strategy that can be used in other Eloy cases. CGRS will also aim to represent women before each of the three other Eloy immigration judges, who likewise decide cases of detained women and who also have extremely high 94+% denial rates.
Previously, CGRS was instrumental in ensuring proper treatment of domestic violence asylum claims for women and children detained at Artesia, New Mexico prior to the closing of that family detention facility. CGRS co-counseled the first two immigration court cases of women detainees raising domestic violence claims at Artesia, and wrote an amicus brief for the third woman’s case. Intervening in this focused way at an early stage strongly influenced the outcome of later gender cases. Advocates won the vast majority of merits hearings out of Artesia before its closure: a total of 15 asylum grants by immigration judges.
-
Each year, the government initiates deportation proceedings against thousands of children, but does not guarantee that those children have legal representation. Like adults, children who cannot afford to hire an attorney or find pro bono counsel are forced to navigate the complex and adversarial immigration system on their own, even though the government is always represented by a trained attorney. Although this is a longstanding problem, the number of children affected by it has grown significantly as increasing numbers of children flee violence in Central America and are placed into the deportation process upon their arrival in the United States.
To address this problem, in July 2014, we and our partners (the ACLU, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Public Counsel, and K&L Gates) filed a nationwide class action lawsuit on behalf of children who are challenging the federal government’s failure to provide them with legal representation as it carries out removal proceedings against them. The complaint charges the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Health and Human Services, Executive Office for Immigration Review, and Office of Refugee Resettlement with violating the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause and the Immigration and Nationality Act’s requirement of a “full and fair hearing” before an immigration judge. It seeks to require the government to provide legal representation to all children in deportation proceedings.
CASE UPDATES SINCE GRANT YEAR
-
Litigated to reverse former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ June 2018 ruling in the case Matter of A-B-, vacating the previously controlling BIA precedent ruling Matter of A-R-C-G-, which had affirmed the right of domestic violence survivors to seek asylum.
The case is still in litigation.
As of 2022, CGRS informed the Foundation there have been no new updates on the case since 2020.
-
In their second grant-funded case, they litigated on behalf of a young Guatemalan domestic violence survivor who sought protection before the Immigration Court in Arizona. That case, Matter of S-O-, was litigated as a part of a broader strategy, to transform the culture of immigration courts in jurisdictions particularly hostile to asylum seekers. The immigration judges in Arizona were denying asylum in a staggering 94.9 percent of cases, far out of sync with the national average.
In February 2017, the individual was granted asylum, was reunited with her son, and is beginning her new life in the United States.
“The grant from the Barbara McDowell Foundation was critical to our ability to win protection for our client,” said Blaine Bookey, Legal Director.
Media coverage included stories in the Washington Post and on National Public Radio.
-
Moved the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) to reconsider its denial of asylum in the case of an indigenous woman who fled Guatemala after suffering severe domestic violence at the hands of her father, as well as her common law husband. Matter of R-P-
They prevailed in the case when, in another asylum case, Matter of A-R-C-G-, the BIA definitively recognizing domestic violence as a basis for asylum for the first time.
GRANT AMOUNT
$30,000 (2019)
$16,667 (2016)
$13,000 (2015)
“The Barbara McDowell Foundation’s generous support enabled CGRS to pursue all possible avenues to justice for Ms. A.B. and for the thousands of asylum-seeking women, children, and families impacted by the ruling in her case. Our team remains committed to winning a reversal of Matter of A-B- and restoring asylum protections for domestic violence survivors who turn to the United States for safe haven.”
- Blaine Bookey, Legal Director and Counsel for Ms. A.B.