Trump administration moves to block asylum for victims of domestic abuse, gangs
WASHINGTON – Attorney General Jeff Sessions has ordered immigration judges to stop granting asylum to most victims of domestic abuse and gang violence, a move that would block tens of thousands of people, especially women, from seeking refuge in America.
The decision, which immigration advocates are sure to aggressively fight, came as Sessions seeks to use the authority of his office to sharply change U.S. immigration law to make it less friendly to asylum seekers.
The attorney general has the power to issue decisions that serve as binding precedents for immigration judges. In this instance, he used a case involving a victim of domestic violence from El Salvador to rule that survivors of such “private” crimes are not eligible for asylum under U.S. law.
“Generally, claims by aliens pertaining to domestic violence or gang violence perpetrated by nongovernmental actors will not qualify for asylum,” Sessions wrote in his ruling. “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 U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks during a meeting with California leaders and public officials who oppose California’s sanctuary policies at the White House on May 16 in Washington, D.C.
of crime, cannot itself establish an asylum claim.”
In a speech earlier in the day to a training session for immigration officials, Sessions telegraphed his position, saying that “asylum was never meant to alleviate all problems – even all serious problems – that people face every day all over the world.”
His anticipated “ruling restores sound principles of asylum and longstanding principles of immigration law,” he said.
Sessions emphasized at the conference that immigration judges will be required to follow his interpretation of the law. Under immigration law, the attorney general’s rulings are binding on immigration judges unless overturned by a federal
appellate court.
The policy Sessions took aim at lies at the heart of an area of immigration law that has been hotly contested over the past two decades. During that time, advocates for victims of domestic violence have succeeded in winning cases that liberalized the law to protect victims of abuse or extortion whose home governments couldn’t or wouldn’t protect them. Many of the immigrants granted asylum as a result were fleeing Central American nations that offer little protection to victims of domestic abuse and gangs.
The government does not appear to keep statistics on exactly how many asylum claims fall into the categories Sessions is now excluding, but advocates estimate that domestic violence victims seeking asylum number in the tens of thousands each year. Many of those requests have been successful, as a result of several administrative rulings and court cases during the Obama administration.
“There are many, many Central American women and women from other parts of the world who have been able to obtain protection,” said Denise Gilman, director of the immigration clinic at the University of Texas Law School in Austin. “Many women sitting right now in detention under these claims might lose their right to obtain protection and be deported to dangerous situations.”
Sessions’ action on Monday overturned earlier court decisions and a 2014 ruling by the Board of Immigration Appeals, which held that people trapped in domestic violence in Central America could qualify for asylum.
The attorney general’s decision forms a key part of a broader Trump administration effort to restrict immigration and discourage asylum seekers from coming to the U.S. The administration has also stripped various legal rights from detainees, and has been separating families detained by immigration agents.
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court made it easier Monday for states to remove occasional voters from the rolls, upholding an Ohio law that drops voters who fail to cast a ballot and do not respond to several notices.
In a 5-4 decision, the court’s conservative majority agreed with Ohio Republicans who said they sought to “clean up” the voting rolls by purging the names of people who appeared to have moved and left the area. The court said that nationwide, 24 million voter registrations are estimated to be inaccurate or invalid, mostly of people who have moved.
The four liberal justices dissented and said the ruling would allow officials to wrongly eliminate the voter registrations of people who sat out an election or two and did not respond to notices in the mail.
The legal dispute played out against a backdrop where two major parties had opposite views. Republicans spoke of “voter fraud” and election rolls they said were stocked with ineligible and illegal voters, while Democrats complained of “voter suppression” by GOP states which, they said, made it harder for minorities and the poor to cast ballots.
Ohio has gone further than other states in trying to “clean up” its voter rolls, and liberal activists said they feared its model will now be used in other Republican-leaning states.
“Voters should not be purged from the rolls simply because they have exercised their right not to vote. This ruling is a setback for voting rights, but it is not a green light to engage in wholesale purges of eligible voters without notice,” said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’S Voting Rights Project.
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted called the decision “a victory for election integrity, and a defeat for those who use the federal court system to make election law across the country. This decision is validation of Ohio’s efforts to clean up the voter rolls and now with the blessing nation’s highest court, it can serve as a model for other states to use.”
Civil rights lawyers had sued Ohio and argued thousands of voters in Cleveland and other big cities had been wrongly removed from voting rolls. They won an appeals court ruling that held the state was violating the federal “Motor Voter Act.”