Giving Compass' Take:

• The Trump administration has overturned protections for asylum seekers who have been victims of domestic violence. While this story was published before these changes were made, it helps provide context to the larger immigration issue.

• How can philanthropy offer support to women who are trying to escape abuse in other countries? Are there groups on the ground in those countries that are working to change the culture around women?  

• Find out why changing immigration policies may prevent abuse victims in the U.S. from coming forward. 

Women in an exodus from Central America since 2014 have succeeded in winning asylum or other protections in the United States as victims of a pandemic of domestic abuse in that region. Because of recent cases that established fear of domestic violence as a legitimate basis for asylum, those claims often found more solid legal grounding in immigration court than claims of people who said they were escaping from killer gangs.

The case of L.C. (who asked that only her initials be used, as she and her daughter build new lives in Chicago) shows what women stand to lose [with changes to asylum protections]. She recalled in an interview how her husband woke her in the morning pulling her hair and punching her.

L.C. won her case based on a 39-page brief painstakingly crafted by a team of volunteer lawyers led by the firm Kirkland & Ellis and the National Immigrant Justice Center. Without them, she said, she wouldn’t even have known to mention her history of abuse to immigration authorities.

Read the full article about abused women seeking asylum by Julia Preston at The Marshall Project.