Legal News

9th Circuit rules for reconsideration of Guatemalan woman's asylum case

By Richard Binder

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed two immigration courts' deportation orders for Lesly Yajayra Perdomo, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala who had petitioned the immigration courts for asylum in 2003.  Perdomo had cited the high rate of murders in her home country, and both the immigration court and the Board of Immigration Appeals had ruled that "all women in Guatemala" was too broad to qualify as a protected social group.

The circuit, however, concluded in their decision that "females, or young girls of a particular clan, met our definition of a particular social group," according to Judge Richard Paez, writing for the unanimous three-judge panel.

More than 3,800 Guatemalan women have been murdered since 2000 and fewer than 2 percent of the crimes have been solved, according to the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at the University of California, San Francisco's law school.

Perdomo's case, barring an appeal, will go back to the Board of Immigration.

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Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on July 13, 2010 (boomark / email).