Help Protect Women Asylum-Seekers
The nation’s highest immigration court, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), recently issued a disturbing decision (Matter of A-T-) denying the request for asylum of a young woman who was subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM) as a child and who fears a forced marriage if she is returned to Mali. The Tahirih Justice Center is already feeling the consequences of this unjust decision in our own cases, and we need your help to put gender-based asylum law back on track!
Please urge your Senator today to endorse a bipartisan “sign-on” letter asking the Attorney General to review the flawed legal decision in Matter of A-T-, which threatens to leave women and girls fleeing gender-based persecution without protection.
The Tahirih Justice Center is advocating with other organizations and a broad spectrum of political allies to reverse this decision and to reaffirm the availability of protection in the United States for women and girls fleeing violent human rights abuses. In March, Tahirih held a Congressional Briefing to draw attention to Matter of A-T- and other alarming legal decisions that signal dangerous steps backward in gender-based asylum law in the United States.
Please email or call your Senator today (we especially need outreach to Republican Senators)—the deadline on this bipartisan sign-on letter is this Friday, April 25th:
- Send an email. Visit the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies’ online action page where you will find a draft email prepared and ready for you to personalize and send with a few clicks.
- Make a call. Call the United States Senate switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to your Senator’s office. Ask to speak with the staffer who covers immigration and/or human rights issues. Talking points for your call:
- Urge the Senator to endorse the bi-partisan sign-on letter currently being circulated by Senators Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Carl Levin (D-MI) that asks the Attorney General to review a recent devastating decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals that unjustly denied protection to a young woman from Mali (Matter of A-T-).
- Offer to email the staffer a link to the sign-on letter to make sure it gets to the top of the staffer’s in-box: Download PDF
- Impress upon the staffer that the deadline for signatures is this Friday, April 25th. To sign on, the staffer should contact Dylan Williams in Senator Snowe’s office at 202-224-5097 or Kevin Glandon in Senator Levin’s office at 202-224-9103.
The more Senators that sign on to the letter, the greater the pressure will be on the Attorney General to review the decision in this pivotal case!
