Waiting for Alvarado: How Administrative Delay Harms Victims Of Gender-Based Violence Seeking Asylum
“Well? Shall we go? Yes, let’s go. (They do not move).”
Over the course of their ten-year marriage in Guatemala, Ms. Rody Alvarado Peña’s husband brutally and violently abused her. Ms.Alvarado managed to escape to America, but once she arrived, she discovered that the most intimate details of her life would be scrutinized in an administrative immigration system that re-victimized her and protracted her suffering for another fourteen years. She has not seen her children since she arrived, and until she was granted asylum in December2009, she had no way to bring them to the United States. Her case is one of the most illustrative and modern examples of administrative malfunction and delay in the American immigration system Read More …