Campaign Action
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which brought on the lawsuit that forced the Trump administration to return kidnapped migrant children back to their parents, is now suing Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III for his recent guidance eviscerating the asylum process by outright blocking claims from domestic violence and gang violence victims.
Under the guidance, CNN reported last month, “officers who interview asylum seekers at the US borders and evaluate refugee applications, claims based on fear of gang and domestic violence will be immediately rejected.” The result could be thousands of asylum seekers sent back to their deaths.
“Gender-based persecution has been recognized as a basis for asylum for decades,” said the ACLU in a statement. “However, Sessions has declared that the plight of domestic and gang violence survivors is ‘merely personal.’” Now, the organization and a group of asylum seekers, “predominantly women and children from Central America,” are challenging the administration.
One of these plaintiffs, an indigenous Guatemalan woman named Grace, fled her home country after she was beaten, raped, and threatened with death by her partner of more than two decades. Grace should have a strong claim for protections in the U.S., but under the Trump administration she “was quickly denied, and she now faces deportation back to the all-too-real threat of death.”
By decree, Sessions and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen are sentencing vulnerable people like Grace to their deaths—and these officials must be stopped. “The Trump administration's effort to eliminate that protection betrays our values and flouts our laws,” the ACLU said. “The courts must step in to stop it.”