Joint Statement of the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice and Chicago Council of Lawyers on the recent decision in Matter of A-B-
Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice and the Chicago Council of Lawyers join with the immigration and domestic violence legal communities in condemning the U.S. Attorney General’s June 11, 2018 decision in Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 315 (A.G. 2018) which reverses long-standing protections to persons seeking asylum from private violence. We have long advocated for fair and impartial judicial process. The Attorney General’s broad decision, which attempts to rewrite decades of settled asylum law, disrespects the due process and the role of judges in the kind of deliberate decision-making that makes for well-reasoned law.
The U.S. has a long-standing history of permitting asylum-seekers to base claims on persecution by non-state actors; that is, a claim of private violence may form the basis of a request for asylum. This humanitarian policy has offered women and children and others fleeing domestic violence, gang violence, or gender-based persecution refuge and essential dignity. In the A-B- decision, Sessions declares that asylum claims pertaining to domestic violence should no longer be approved, despite Board of Immigration Appeals caselaw affirming domestic violence as a basis for asylum claims.
A-B¬-, a Salvadoran woman, sought asylum in the U.S. as a survivor of domestic violence. She faced brutal abuse for 15 years at the hands of her husband and remained unable to secure protection in her native country. The Board of Immigration Appeals found her claims credible, based upon robust documentation, but the Attorney General intervened to reject not only her claims, but the overarching principle of refuge offered to victims of domestic violence and other non-state forms of violence.
The Attorney General’s actions are an affront not only to the human rights of women fleeing domestic violence, they are an attempt to unilaterally reshape a complex body of law to further an anti-immigrant agenda that does not reflect respect for the rule of law nor the value of human life.
We encourage you to read the detailed statements of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, National Immigrant Justice Center and the American Immigration Lawyers Association reacting to the decision. The Center for Gender and Refugee Studies is also collecting information on cases pending before the federal courts of appeals that may raise challenges to the A-B- ruling via this online form and cases denied under the ruling, even if not yet ripe for appeal, via this email.
Chicago Appleseed and Chicago Council of Lawyers are profoundly disturbed by the decision. We stand with the legal community in opposition to this move by the Attorney General. We remain firm in our belief that women’s rights are human rights and that it is our duty to protect the human dignity of all immigrants.