Since Mabel Center’s founding, we have committed to taking – and winning – legally complex asylum cases on behalf of women fleeing horrific gender-based abuse and domestic violence in their home countries.
Most of our clients come to the Boston area from Central American and Caribbean countries that have the highest femicide rates in the world. They are often mothers who flee with their children.
For our clients and their children, asylum in the United States has served as a last path to a life of liberty and freedom. Under this administration, however, that pathway is narrowing and close to disappearing.
The increasingly politicized Board of Immigration Appeals recently released Matter of K-E-S-G-, a cruel decision devised to significantly narrow the viability of gender-based asylum claims in immigration court and prevent women who fled their countries based on personal and systemic gender violence from receiving protection.
When the first Trump administration issued similarly restrictive caselaw on gender-based cases, Daniel and I continued to creatively, emphatically, and successfully defend our clients in immigration court. We took legally complex gender-based cases, cases on drastically shortened timelines, and cases for which they created caselaw specifically to deny.
We won many of those cases, and we will continue winning this time as well. In collaboration with community partners, advocates, and lawyers from around the country, our team will stand firm against this assault on legal protections for women and children seeking asylum.
Thank you for your continued support of our clients, and of our work.
Jill Seeber, Executive Director
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