The majority of asylum seekers I've represented in the past 10 years have been women, who fled to the US to escape relentless violence and psychological terror inflicted on them by men, who brutalized "their" women to the point my clients felt their choices were: flee or die. 1/
Once you've heard several stories of domestic abuse, you realize: Most of them are variations on a theme. Whether they beat their women in Mexico, Jordan, or China, men will justify it by saying "I'm the man of the house. I can do to you whatever I want. You exist to serve me."2/
Of course they don't say those exact words each time, but as the years went on, I found myself dreading the moment my client told me her abuser's particular variety of "I wear the pants, and you do what I want" -- because the story's predictability was deeply unsettling to me. 3/
I came to understand the reason these men punched "their" women, beat them with belts, pulled them to the ground by the hair to kick them in the ribs, raped them repeatedly, raped them in front of their children, told them they were worthless and no one would ever want them... 4/
...held knives to their throats, and told them if they ever dared tell anyone.they would pay with their lives, whispered in their ears that no matter where these women went they would always find them, and then told them they loved them and asked for forgiveness. 5/
The reason these men made my clients live in constant anguish and fear was not a particular gripe they had with my clients, but their deep-seated belief that they had the right to do whatever they wanted to "their" women, who existed only to fulfill their needs and desires. 6/
It was both a rewarding and a soul crushing experience to work with my clients, to talk through their stories with them and pick them apart, and - in many cases - to witness their burgeoning realization of what had happened to them: 7/
They weren't abused because they didn't cook their boyfriend's dinner correctly, or because their dad was an angry guy, but because they lived in societies where they, as women, were worth less than men, where their lives and dignities mattered less than men's base desires. 8/
Their partners and fathers were asserting what they believed was their naturally given right. 9/
It took decades of strategic advocacy to obtain a law that recognized that women, who had suffered egregious violence at the hands of men, who thought of them as property and lived in societies that did not disabuse men of these views, should be granted refuge in the US. 10/
Today, Sessions undid those (and other) protections, opining that domestic abuse is a private matter, a personal dispute. Ironically, that is often what the police in machista societies told my clients when they denied them the protection my clients implored them to provide. 11/
Aside from being part of a systematic assault on the rights of those, who are trying to immigrate to the US, this decision is an affront to women's rights everywhere and to the rights of those, who don't believe men are allowed to brutalize women, just because they are men. 12/
As immigration lawyers, we will fight back against this decision one case at a time. As non-immigration lawyers, you can help keep the public attention on this issue - and you can lend your talents to many of the other worthwhile battles being fought around the US. 13/
For now, women and children will be sent to their deaths because of this decision. Let there be absolutely no doubt about that.
