Abstract

A CRIME TO DREAM

The article looks at women asylum seekers in the United States who have suffered from domestic violence. On April 15, 1984, Rodi Alvarado, a 16-year-old Guatemalan girl, married Francisco Osorio, a soldier five years her senior. He would beat her mercilessly, sometimes until she was unconscious. The beatings soon escalated into daily episodes of rape. Since her husband was in the military, seeking help from Guatemalan authorities was risky. Alvarado got on a bus heading for the United States. She was questioned by immigration officials, but she failed to mention her history of severe domestic abuse, fearing that it would not be considered a compelling enough reason for an asylum claim. In 1996 she was granted asylum by an immigration judge, only to have the decision reversed by the Board of Immigration Appeals. Every year, thousands of women like Alvarado arrive in the U.S. seeking refuge. The abuse and sometimes invasive and inhumane conditions that these women face in jail further adds to their trauma and impairs their abilities to present their cases clearly and adequately to already skeptical immigration judges. In 1996, Kassindja Tijani received political asylum, becoming the first woman to be granted asylum status on the basis of female genital mutilation.