For immigrant women, domestic violence creates a double shadow

Washington Post

Deysi Gonzalez’s diary begins with this sentence: “On July 3, 2002, I met the man I thought would be the love of my life.” Instead, she continues in neat Spanish script, the handsome acquaintance who courted her in Guatemala turned into a possessive bully who stalked and beat her. When she tried to go to the police, she writes, he threatened to kill her.

Gonzalez remained with her abuser, bearing two sons and hoping that the man would mellow. Several months ago, after years of torment, she fled to the United States. Now, she faces a terrible dilemma. She is desperate to reunite with her children but terrified of being deported.

“I miss my babies so much, but I can’t go back. I know he will find me and kill me,” Gonzalez, 26, said recently, sobbing as she stared at a cellphone image of two little boys. Around her sat a dozen other Hispanic women who had gathered at La Clinica del Pueblo in the District. All are victims of domestic violence in their home countries or the United States, and most are here illegally.

In the national debate over immigration changes, little attention has been paid to a subset of immigrants who live in a double shadow: thousands of women who depend on abusive spouses for legal and economic protection in the United States, and thousands more who fled violent partners in their homelands and could be in danger if forced to return.
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