Browse our publications to learn more about how we support immigrant survivors of gender-based violence through service in communities, courts, and Congress.
Tahirih has recently filed comments which object to the continued delay (in lieu of rescission) of the security bars rule. The security bars rule is premised on the false and harmful notion that immigrants may pose a risk to national security by threatening public health. This administration should rescind the rule rather than continue to delay its implementation, risking the possibility that an incoming administration could let it take effect without further notice and comment.
Project Empower is a first-of-its-kind guaranteed income (GI) program designed to support immigrant survivors of gender-based violence. This program offered unconditional, regular cash transfers of $1000 per month to 10 Tahirih clients, all survivors of domestic violence with a child or children, for six months. A new report from Tahirih and our partner, My New Red Shoes, discusses the experiences and lessons learned from the first cohort.
A new report by Tahirih, Time to Lead: The Federal Government’s Role in Ending Child Marriage in the United States highlights the critical role that the federal government must play in our fight to end child marriage here at home. It demonstrates how our current immigration laws put minors across the globe at risk of experiencing child marriage in this country. The glaring gap in our immigration laws that set no minimum age for a foreign beneficiary to a spouse or fiancée visa has allowed shocking cases to proceed, including those in which U.S. men in their 40s and 50s successfully petitioned for girls as young as 14 years old. This report outlines concrete steps that the federal government should take to address child marriage through the immigration system and incentivize states to strengthen their marriage age laws.
A new report by Tahirih, Comparing Compromises: Varying Impacts of Laws that Limit, But Do Not End Child Marriage analyzes data from states that have recently passed a reform to limit child marriage. The report compares the effectiveness of “compromise” legislation – laws that fall short of eliminating marriage under age 18. When complete elimination of child marriage is not possible, the research found that limiting marriage to legal adults, with a robust judicial process, offers the most protection. States that implemented this type of reform saw up to a 96% reduction in child marriage. Other compromise laws were far less effective at preventing child marriages, showing us that the impacts of these reforms vary greatly and there are critical differences hidden in the details of legislative text.
The chart that can be accessed at the “download” button below, updated September 1, 2024, serves as a resource for understanding the state legal regimes that permit child marriages to happen in the United States. It is an eye-opening compilation of the actual text of all 50 states’ laws on minimum marriage age and exceptions that among other things, highlights how many states set which age “floors” for marriage.
For 50-state appendices with detailed “scorecards” on features of states’ minimum marriage age laws, updated as of September 1, 2024, click here.
For a 50-state analysis of the alarming disconnect between minimum marriage ages, age of majority, and statutory rape laws, updated as of August 1, 2020, click here.
Legal writing is a craft defined by strict expectations and parameters, and all litigators must generally adhere to those expectations. If we do not do so, we serve our clients poorly. But in some cases, the need to center the survivor, to center the humanity of all involved in the story, and to navigate the charged context of immigration proceedings requires nuanced departures from standard legal writing. This legal writing guide provides principles for communication that emphasizes the humanity of immigrant survivors and every person in a client’s story.
A new report by Oxfam America and the Tahirih Justice Center documents how common it is for migrants seeking asylum to experience gender-based violence in Mexico while waiting to access the asylum process in the U.S. In Surviving Deterrence: How U.S. Asylum Deterrence Policies Normalize Gender-Based Violence, Oxfam America and Tahirih explain how U.S. asylum deterrence policies, such as border closures and expulsions, exacerbate conditions that cause gender-based violence to proliferate at the southern border. The report further asserts that survivors who do manage to apply for asylum face an inequitable and re-traumatizing process on a systemic level.
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