Court allows asylum for domestic violence
A woman who was raped and beaten by a husband and a partner in Mexico for expressing feminist views — like saying she had the right to be treated equally and hold a job — is eligible for asylum in the United States because she would face persecution in her homeland, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
“Those men mistreated her because she expressly asserted to them her political opinion that she was their equal,” the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in finding Maria RodriguezTornes eligible to remain legally in the United States after fleeing Mexico.
RodriguezTornes was brought up to be a victim, the court said: Starting at age 5, her mother told her to obey her future husband’s orders and accept spousal abuse, and beat her almost daily to prepare her for the future.
She still believed in equality and became a schoolteacher. But when she married Esteban Baron Mata, he told her she had no right to work, burned her face with a cigarette when she refused to quit teaching, told her to obey orders and beat her regularly, the court said. She said she decided not to got to the police after a friend tried to report her own abuse and was told by officers to go home and do her duties.
After Baron left her while she was pregnant, she fled to the United States in 1993, settled in Arizona and became involved with another man, who responded to her assertions of equality by beating, raping and choking her, the court said. Both she and her abuser were deported in 2017, but, still fearing him, RodriguezTornes again entered the United States, where officials began new deportation proceedings.
This time, however, an immigration judge found that RodriguezTornes was eligible for asylum because of her status as a Mexican woman facing persecution, in the form of domestic violence, that her government had shown it was unable to prevent. Asylum is available to migrants who would face persecution in their homeland because of their race, religion or other categories, including their political views.
The findings of persecution were rejected by the Board of Immigration Appeals after thenAttorney General Jeff Sessions, in another case, declared in 2018 that abuse by private citizens, such as domestic violence, generally would not be considered persecution that would qualify the victim for asylum.
Sessions’ decision was binding on U.S. immigration courts but subject to review in appellate courts. The Ninth Circuit, whose rulings govern federal cases in nine Western states, rejected Sessions’ view in a case from Guatemala in August and amplified its stance in RodriguezTornes’ case.
“Feminism qualifies as a political opinion,” Judge M. Margaret McKeown said in Monday’s 30 ruling, quoting a 1993 case. In RodriguezTornes’ case, she said, “the record contains episode after episode of men stating, quite plainly, that they were beating, burning, raping and strangling her because she sought an equal perch in the social hierarchy.”
Elaine Goldenberg, a lawyer for RodriguezTornes, said the ruling shows that “immigration law protects those persecuted because they are feminists, and not just those persecuted because they support a particular political party.” It also shows that a spouse or a partner can be a persecutor, she said.