Denver Immigration Judge Trujillo (Women as Social Group)
Decided April 23, 2019
An immigrant may be eligible for asylum if he or she can establish a credible fear of persecution on the account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. The meaning of “particular social group” has been and will continue to be a cause for extensive litigation. The courts have not provided clear guidance and the more they attempt to define the phrase, the more convoluted the notion becomes. Whether gender alone could constitute a particular social group has been a question of much intrigue and little answers. Recent developments in the law might suggest that the answer is no – contrary to logic – but Denver Immigration Judge Eileen Trujillo took a bold and common sense approach to the question finding that “Mexican women” are a particular social group.
The unfortunate reality is that many countries marginalize women as second-class citizens. Sometimes this occurs through laws that grant men and women different rights, and in other instances religion or long-established cultural traditions relegate women to inferior social statuses. Where a society institutionalizes laws that permit violence against women or holds women and men in unequal standing, there is no reason why gender or sex should not align with the definition of a “refugee” and be treated as tantamount to the broad, protected classes of race, religion, and political opinion.
In this political climate, with Trump’s war on immigration ongoing, it is heartening to know a judge with such independence, strength and intellect at our local Denver immigration court.
