Browse our publications to learn more about how we support immigrant survivors of gender-based violence through service in communities, courts, and Congress.
Institutional Injustice analyzes the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic affects people jailed by ICE. In particular, this report emphasizes the ways in which existing systems along with ICE’s pandemic response endanger people in detention and facilitate the further spread of the virus.
On June 16, 2021, the Department of Justice vacated Matter of A-B-, a decision that cruelly denied access to asylum for thousands of survivors of domestic violence and dramatically limited their access to safety. This decision reopens a pathway for survivors fleeing unimaginable brutality to seek safe haven as permitted under U.S. law.
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced the implementation of a policy that allows U-visa petitioners within the U.S. who submit complete applications and pass a background check to receive a work permit and protection from deportation almost immediately, rather than waiting years in a backlogged system. The U-visa is available to survivors of gender-based violence and other survivors of serious crimes that occur in the U.S. who assist law enforcement with the investigation or prosecution of those crimes. The new policy gives these survivors much greater access to safety and economic stability.
On June 9, 2021, the Tahirih Justice Center filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in federal court to compel the government to release records about the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) troubling transition to a “last-in, first-out” system to schedule interviews for affirmative asylum cases.
The Department of Homeland Security officially terminated the “Remain in Mexico” policy, also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, which was implemented over two years ago and forced more than 70,000 individuals to wait in Mexico as their asylum cases are processed. Thousands of individuals and families were harmed under the policy, forcing survivors fleeing gender-based violence to live in dangerous conditions, with limited access to legal counsel and trauma-informed care. The Tahirih Justice Center is a plaintiff in the lawsuit challenging “Remain in Mexico.”
Tahirih and partner organizations filed an amicus brief in the Eleventh Circuit detailing the significant errors the BIA made in holding that a Mexican asylum seeker had not suffered persecution because she is a transgender woman.
A new report from the Tahirih Justice Center sheds light on the increased vulnerabilities that immigrant communities are confronting in the face of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. A System Under Stress: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on non-detained cases in Immigration Courts brings together existing literature and interviews with direct service providers and experts in the field to detail how extended closure of immigration courts, policy changes, and communication difficulties have added barriers for non-detained immigrants on a path to obtain legal status.
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