In recent years, the Texas Legislature has focused increasingly on immigration enforcement at the border and across the state. Texas’s Operation Lone Star (OLS) launched in 2021 and has deployed thousands of law enforcement personnel to the border, making use of state laws, such as trespassing and smuggling, to engage in immigration enforcement. OLS has radically shifted the way that state and local laws are applied to immigrants and border communities, has resulted in racial profiling, and has led to the deaths of dozens of people through high-speed chases and dangerous border barrier infrastructure. During the 3rd and 4th Special Sessions of the 2023 Legislative Session, the Legislature responded to the Governor’s call to expand Operation Lone Star and passed 3 anti-immigrant bills that will have a disproportionate impact on BIPOC immigrant survivors of gender-based violence.

The Tahirih Justice Center is outraged by the news that the administration appears willing to play politics with human lives. These attacks on immigrants and people seeking asylum represent not simply a broken promise, but a betrayal and we urge the President and Congress to reverse course.

Transgender people experience violence worldwide at alarmingly high rates – research shows that trans people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime, […]

The Tahirih Justice Center, with pro bono law firm Orrick LLP, is celebrating success in a lawsuit against the U.S. government for its failure to adjudicate long-overdue asylum applications. A […]

Asylum is a universal right. Every person should have the chance to seek safety from persecution.   Each year, on July 28, we celebrate the anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention, […]

Tahirih’s interdisciplinary approach to direct services, policy advocacy, and training and education is underscored by the intersection of our clients’ diverse lived experiences. Every individual we serve has multiple overlapping […]

The Biden administration has presented the first-ever U.S. National Plan to End Gender-Based Violence: Strategies for Action, a long-awaited, comprehensive, whole-of-government plan that aims to address and prevent gender-based violence (GBV) in this country.  

The Tahirih Justice Center celebrates this milestone which represents a promise to protect human rights and support safety and justice for survivors of sexual violence, intimate partner violence, stalking, child and forced marriage, and other forms of gender-based violence. This plan is the result of years of work by administration officials and stakeholders like Tahirih who convened listening sessions with the White House Gender Policy Council to share our collective knowledge informed by years of providing direct legal and social services to survivors.