Immigration Law
Mukasey Gives Genital Mutilation Victim New Chance for Asylum
Posted Sep 23, 2008, 05:55 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
In a decision hailed by human rights groups, Attorney General Michael Mukasey has vacated a decision denying asylum to a woman who feared she would be forced to undergo another genital mutilation if she were forced to return to Mali.
Mukasey’s action sends the case of Alima Traore back to the Board of Immigration Appeals for reconsideration, the New York Times reports. The board had said in a decision last year that because the cutting could not be repeated, it could not be the basis of a “well-founded fear of persecution.”
Mukasey intervened in the case as it was being appealed to the Richmond, Va.-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Los Angeles Times reports. He said the decision was replete "with legal and factual errors.”
"To begin with, the board based its analysis on a false premise: that female genital mutilation is a 'one-time' act that cannot be repeated on the same women," he wrote. "As several courts have recognized, female genital mutilation is indeed capable of repetition."
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