UC Professor's Testimony Fuels Successful Asylum Bid

The call came, as they often do, from a large law firm handling a pro-bono case. Amy Lind, the Head of the Department of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies, isn’t sure how the firm found her name, but the story they shared was a familiar one.

The 33-year-old wife and mother from Ecuador, physically and emotionally abused by her husband, had fled to New York illegally. He had kicked her in the stomach when she was pregnant. He had threatened to kill her. 

She had a mangled finger, a remnant from one of his many attacks. He had a network of people prepared to hunt her down. This month at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in New York City, the mother of two was fighting not just for asylum, but for her life.

She had left her son and daughter behind with a sister and made her way to New York via a coyote, or smuggler. She got temporary refugee status, a job at a restaurant and a ray of hope when the legal team took on her case for free.

Her lawyers contacted Lind, who filed an in-depth report and appeared as a witness at the asylum hearing. Lind argued that the woman’s experience made her a member of a legally protected “particular social group”—as a woman subjected to gender-based violence, she would not be safe anywhere in her home country. 

The category, which includes asylum seekers not already protected in the four categories established in the 1951 Refugee Convention (race, religion, political opinion, nationality), was expanded in the 1990s to include people persecuted because of their sexual identity as well as victims of intimate partner violence. Lind has acted as an expert witness in more than 20 asylum cases, about half relating to each of the issues covered in the expansion.

Lind understands the stakes are high. “She was facing deportation,” said Lind, who also serves as the Mary Ellen Heintz Endowed Chair Professor in WGSS, which resides in the College of Arts and Sciences. She has studied intimate partner violence in Ecuador since the late 1980s and has talked with many women in similar circumstances. “She would have been sent back to Ecuador immediately.”

Lind, along with a medical doctor who testified about the woman’s physical and psychological injuries, both showed up for the hearing, at which asylum was granted. It was an emotional moment for everyone involved.

“It makes a huge difference for the witnesses to be there,” Lind said. 

A Dangerous Road

Lind, who grew up in Southern California, is no stranger to violence. She was an undergraduate at the University of California Santa Cruz when she spent a year studying abroad in Lima, Peru. Three months after her arrival, attacks by the armed leftist Shining Path guerilla group led the country into a national state of emergency. 

“I saw the implications of violence,” Lind said. As she worked with a variety of feminist organizations, she witnessed how violence seeped from the streets into homes, where it took root alongside longstanding machismo, or a culture of exaggerated masculinity and rigid gender roles. 

Lind has extensively researched how women respond to these cultural phenomena and the resulting high rates of domestic violence throughout Latin America, in Ecuador in particular. She made her first trip to Ecuador in 1988, and her research there led to her 2005 book, “Gendered Paradoxes: Women’s Movements, State Restructuring, and Global Development in Ecuador.” Its publication helped establish her as a global expert on the topic.

But Lind’s connection to intimate partner violence also has deeply personal roots.

Seeking refuge, finding strength

As a survivor of a physically and emotionally abusive relationship, Lind understands many of the challenges the asylum-seekers she supports have faced. “Even though I defined myself as a feminist, it was very hard for me to acknowledge that the person I loved so deeply was also manipulative and abusive,” she said, adding that intimate partner violence happens across class lines.

For her, it’s important that when necessary, she can share more than her scholarly expertise.

“I have learned a lot about stalking, control and the fine line between love and violence through my experience, which even now are difficult for me to talk about,” she said. “But I talk about them because I think it is important to share our experiences with others and to not be silent or ashamed.”

Her dedication to supporting those who have endured intimate partner violence makes Lind a formidable witness. While there is no central clearinghouse listing her and others qualified to prepare reports and testify on behalf of victims, legal professionals seek Lind out, typically about six months before a client’s immigration hearing. 

She is currently working on another report, for another Ecuadorian woman with another familiar, horrible story. Lind expects the hearing to take place later this year, and she’s ready to testify in person if asked. 

“Seeking refuge can save people’s lives,” Lind said.