Dear Friends,
When Norma* built up the courage to leave her abusive, U.S. citizen husband, he used her and her children’s undocumented status to exploit, intimidate, and threaten her.
He promised to have them deported if they called the police, and he destroyed Norma’s personal documents to prevent her from filing for immigration relief on her own. He removed her name from their shared bank accounts, canceled her credit card, and eventually forged her signature on a document transferring full ownership of their house to his name.
Sadly, this is something we see with many of our Tahirih clients: fear used as a powerful tool to coerce victims and stop them from speaking out or asking for help from their abusers. Fear has especially been heighted the last few months for immigrant survivors of domestic violence, human trafficking, and forced marriage due to changes of immigration enforcement. In this new report, the Alliance for Immigrant Survivors, which Tahirih proudly co-chairs, finds that more than 75% of advocates surveyed report that immigrant survivors now have concerns about contacting the police. This is absolutely heartbreaking and makes us ALL less safe.
For the past 28 years, Tahirih has held the belief that everyone deserves to live in safety, no matter where we were born, the color of our skin, or our gender. We’ve answered over 36,000 calls for help from survivors fleeing violence. Survivors just like Norma, who, with the help of her Tahirih legal team, was able to access protection under United States law. Now, Norma gives back to her community, tells her story to domestic violence survivors, church groups, radio shows, and in women’s prisons.
There is a path forward and I know we can overcome fear, together.
In solidarity,
Archi
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