"Secure Communities" Threatens DV Victims with Deportation

Advocacy agencies are raising serious concerns about the Department of Homeland Security's "Secure Communities" program. Many agencies are going so far as to tell undocumented victims of domestic violence never to call the police, because they risk being deported themselves.

Designed to identify and deport dangerous, undocumented immigrants with a criminal history, Secure Communities has removed about 58,300 convicts from the United States since its pilot launch in late 2008, according to ICE.

But 28 percent of the people transferred to ICE custody under Secure Communities from October 2008 through June 2010 were non-criminals, according to ICE figures. Some of the detained people--an unknown number--are victims of domestic and sexual violence.

While federal law protects crime victims from having to reveal their immigration status, if these victims are arrested or have been arrested in the past Secure Communities now discloses that.

This can affect victims in a scenario where a police officer arrives at the home and can't communicate with the couple. Police may arrest both parties or even arrest the victim if the abuser speaks English and twists the series of events that led to the police call.

Victims are also subject to "revenge arrests," when abusers call the police and accuse them of perpetuating the violence.

"The man says, 'Look she scratched me, I didn't do anything.' So the woman gets arrested and if undocumented, she gets reported to ICE," Neugebaeur said. "How can I as a lawyer say now in good conscience, free and clear, 'Don't worry about anything, call the police,' because if you call the police, you can be reported to immigration services."

Several Georgia counties are already enrolled in the program, including all 5 in metro Atlanta, and the entire state will be enrolled by the end of 2012. We hate to have to say so, but if you are undocumented or are counseling a someone impacted by domestic violence who is undocumented, consider the risk of deportation before you reach out to the police. If you choose not to call 911, please get to a safe place and then contact your local domestic violence safehouse. In Atlanta: (404) 688-9436. In Georgia: (800) 33-HAVEN. Elsewhere: (800) 799-SAFE.

Big Win for GCFV!

Thanks to everyone who responded to our call to help save the Georgia Commission on Family Violence. Your efforts worked!

The House and the Senate passed a budget that moves funding for the Commission over to the Judicial Council, where it can best be protected. And instead of zeroing out their budget, as originally proposed, the legislature made sure the Commission maintained 90% of its funding - which, in today's climate, is another huge victory.

To learn more about the Commission and the work that they do, visit their website.

Bill Would Protect Pets From Domestic Violence

A bill up for consideration in the Georgia Legislature this year would add pets as protected parties under domestic violence protective orders.

Animal rights advocates and domestic violence prevention groups have united behind the bill. They say it will help prevent situations like the vicious beating of a pet dachshund that occurred in Gwinnett County last week. Dainley Green, accused of beating his family's pet dachshund in front of his children, was charged in the case.

The dog was still bleeding and had bloodshot eyes from being strangled when deputies arrived at the Lawrenceville home. Authorities were tipped off to the abuse when Green's wife filed for a temporary protective order.

"If you think about it in a domestic violence way, people are so attached to their pets now," said state Rep. Sharon Cooper (R-Marietta), who sponsored HB 429. "One way to really hurt the person you're trying to control is to go after the pet."

The bill, which made it out of a House committee last year but missed the deadline for crossover to the Senate, would let judges order an alleged abuser to refrain from harming family pets. It also would allow the judge to direct the care, custody or control of a pet. The law would not apply to livestock, working animals, laboratory animals or sport animals.

Cooper said the bill went back to the Judiciary Non-Civil Committee, where she will ask for it to be resurrected this year.

Batterers often use pets to control family members, domestic abuse experts say. According to a national survey of family violence shelters conducted by university researchers in 1997, 71 percent of victims reported that their abusers threatened, injured or killed the family pets.

Nicole Lesser, director of the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said securing protection for pets is a big issue in the field of domestic violence.

"I don't think you'll hear any opposition to that in the domestic violence world," Lesser said. "I've had many clients say, ‘If I can't take my dog, I can't leave.'"

The Ahimsa House is a Decatur-based nonprofit organization that takes in the pets of domestic violence victims, providing shelter for them in a network of foster homes and boarding facilities. The organization's president, Maya Gupta, said it has received 709 crisis calls and sheltered about 150 animals since 2007. A majority of the pets they see have injuries or illness resulting from neglect, Gupta said.

"It's such an under-recognized thing that people don't realize," Gupta said.

In issuing a protective order, courts can order a person to refrain from domestic violence, authorize a dangerous person to be evicted from a home or force them to provide housing elsewhere for a partner, and set up child and spousal support payments. Cooper's bill would allow pets to be included.

Eleven states have already passed similar pet-protection laws, according to the Humane Society of the United States.

Chesta Drake, a retired school counselor who volunteers for the Humane Society, and others involved with the organization will be at the Capitol next week urging passage of Cooper's bill. She said what happened to the Green family's pet dachshund shows just how timely the legislation is.

"So many times animals are used just like this to threaten or control or horrify the family," Drake said.

We'll have more updates for you on ways you can take action to help pass this bill.

Obama Opens Asylum for Some Battered Women

The Obama administration has opened the way for foreign women who are victims of severe domestic violence and sexual abuse to receive asylum in the United States.

The action reverses a Bush administration stance in a protracted and passionate legal battle over the possibilities for battered women to become refugees.

In addition to meeting other strict conditions for asylum, abused women will need to show that they are treated by their abuser as subordinates and little better than property, according to an immigration court filing by the administration, and that domestic abuse is widely tolerated in their country. They must show that they could not find protection from institutions at home or by moving to another place within their own country.

The administration laid out its position in an immigration appeals court filing in the case of a woman from Mexico who requested asylum, saying she feared she would be murdered by her common-law husband there. According to court documents filed in San Francisco, the man repeatedly raped her at gunpoint, held her captive, stole from her and at one point tried to burn her alive when he learned she was pregnant.

The government has marked a clear, although narrow, pathway for battered women seeking asylum, lawyers said, after 13 years of tangled court arguments, including resistance from the Bush administration to recognize any of those claims.

Moving cautiously, the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately recommend asylum for the Mexican woman, who is identified in the court papers only by her initials as L.R. But the department, in the unusual submission written by senior government lawyers, concluded in plain terms that “it is possible” that the Mexican woman “and other applicants who have experienced domestic violence could qualify for asylum.”

As recently as last year, Bush administration lawyers had argued in the same case that in spite of her husband’s brutality, L.R. and other battered women could not meet the standards of American asylum law.

“This really opens the door to the protection of women who have suffered these kinds of violations,” said Karen Musalo, a professor who is director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. Professor Musalo has represented other abused women seeking asylum and recently took up the case of L.R.

Read the entire New York Times article.

We applaud the Obama administration for recognizing the dangers of domestic violence and offering our country's protection to survivors, though it is ironic that one of the requirements for potential asylees is proof that domestic violence is widely tolerated in their country. We challenge an appeals court to find a country where domestic violence is not widely tolerated, including this one.

White House Appoints DV Advisor

From ABC News:

Vice President Biden announced today that Lynn Rosenthal will be the White House adviser on Violence Against Women, a new position created to work with the president and vice president on domestic violence and sexual assault issues.

Joining Biden for the announcement was Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor and assistant to the president for Intergovernmental Relations and Public Engagement.

Rosenthal most recently served as the executive director of the New Mexico Coalition Against Domestic Violence and has focused on domestic violence issues like housing, state and local coordinated community response, federal policy, and survivor-centered advocacy.

From 2000-2006, she served as the executive director of the National Network to End Domestic Violence and played a key role in the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2000 and 2005.

Biden called the work Rosenthal will do in this new position "incredibly consequential” and joked that he had already given her an assignment on her first day.

“And Valerie looked at me and was like, give her a break!” he said to laughter from the assembled audience of advocates against domestic violence.

The vice president said that when he and President Obama discussed who they wanted to take on this role, they said it had to be someone who would "literally, not figuratively" go to bed every night thinking about what can be done to protect women from violence.

Biden said there are 48 million reported cases of violence done by an intimate partner and said that while there's no count on how many are unreported, more women are coming out of the shadows.

"The worst imprisonment in the whole world is to be imprisoned in your own home," the vice president said. "The most vicious of all crimes are domestic crimes."

Afghan President Legalizes Rape

Critics claim that Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, helped rush a bill through parliament which legalizes rape in a bid to appease Islamic fundamentalists ahead of elections in August.

In a massive blow for women's rights, the new Shia Family Law negates the need for sexual consent between married couples, tacitly approves child marriage and restricts a woman's right to leave the home, according to UN papers seen by The Independent.

The bill lay dormant for more than a year, but in February it was rushed through parliament as President Karzai sought allies in a constitutional row over the upcoming election.

The most controversial parts of the law deal explicitly with sexual relations. Article 132 requires women to obey their husband's sexual demands and stipulates that a man can expect to have sex with his wife at least "once every four nights" when travelling, unless they are ill. The law also gives men preferential inheritance rights, easier access to divorce, and priority in court.

A report by the United Nations Development Fund for Women, Unifem, warned: "Article 132 legalises the rape of a wife by her husband".

The final document has not been published, but the law is believed to also contain articles that rule women cannot leave the house without their husbands' permission and that they can only seek work, education or visit the doctor with their husbands' permission.

A briefing document prepared by the United Nations Development Fund for Women also warns that the law grants custody of children to fathers and grandfathers only.

Update: About 300 Afghan women, facing an angry throng three times larger than their own, walked the streets of the capital on Wednesday to demand that Parliament repeal the law. Counter protests hurled stones and yelled insults and threats while female Afghan police officers joined hands to form a human chain around the women to try to protect them.