Rená Cutlip started her legal career representing migrant farm workers. As an international traveler and a volunteer with AmeriCorps, Ms. Cutlip, 30, knew she wanted to help people navigate the complex U.S. immigration system. As an attorney, she figured, she would be able to help the most people and help change the system.
"Our immigration system isn't fair," she said. "It wasn't until living in the Dominican Republic and then working as an AmeriCorps volunteer that I realized I really wanted to work with immigrants and work to change our immigration system."
Layli Miller-Muro started Tahirih, named for a 19th-century poet who fought for women's rights in the Middle East. Ms. Miller-Muro was inundated with requests for legal assistance after she won a high-profile asylum case for a girl who fled Togo in the face of a forced polygamous marriage and genital mutilation. The girl, Fauziya Kassindja, was locked up for 17 months and granted asylum in 1996 by the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals.
The Tahirih Justice Center was started as a result of that case and is now a leading pro bono legal advocacy group, which uses litigation and public policy to help women.
Cutlip said one of the biggest challenges for the center is reaching women who are in trouble, so the victims know they have rights. A major part of Cutlip's job is finding volunteer attorneys to take on cases. Although Tahirih serves the Washington, DC, metro area, Cutlip said she is building a network of attorneys from around the country so that she can help women who call, no matter where they live. The center aims to help all victims of domestic abuse, but focuses on the immigrant population and women seeking asylum or refugee status. The clients are typically from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
One client, for example, was a 14-year-old girl brought to the United States from Nigeria. Her parents sent her to live with an American family because they promised their daughter would receive a top-notch Western education in exchange for babysitting.
The girl never received that education, Cutlip said. The girl was forced to work as a nanny, maid, and cook, often for more than 20 hours a day. The parents would leave her with their children for weeks at a time. "And then she was subjected to rape by the husband," Cutlip said.
The center also does much work to protect so-called mail-order brides. In a highly publicized case, the center helped a Ukrainian woman named Nataliya Fox escape from her abusive husband. In November 2004, Ms. Fox won a landmark case against Encounters International, a marriage broker, which brokered her marriage to an American man who abused her. When she went to the agency seeking help, they told her to go home to her husband or she would be deported. The agency was ordered to pay Fox $433,500 in damages, $341,500 of which were punitive damages.
Tahirih's legal department focuses on immigration cases and does not do civil cases, but it helped Fox obtain pro bono counsel. Tahirih is now crafting legislation that, if passed, would make it mandatory for agencies to provide potential brides with criminal records and other information about the men they plan to marry.
Cutlip, who worked for several immigration law firms to pay her way through law school, said she is always looking for more volunteer attorneys.
"The biggest part of what I do is coordinating, recruiting, and mentoring pro bono volunteer attorneys," she said.
Before joining Tahirih in 2004, Cutlip was the Immigration Program Director at La Esperanza Community Center in Georgetown, DE. And she was an attorney with Farm Worker Legal Services, a division of Legal Services of South Central Michigan.
"Doing general immigration at the community center was rewarding because we were working with low-wage workers on a variety of issues that low-wage immigrant workers face," she said. "However, what I realized was my most rewarding and most challenging and most compelling cases were my cases for battered immigrant women."
Cutlip decided she wanted to devote her career full time to helping abused women, which is why she joined Tahirih.
Fluent in Spanish, Cutlip visited Guatemala while in college and fell in love with the country. She decided to learn the language and move to Guatemala. She studied Spanish in Chile and the Dominican Republic and then decided she'd be of more use helping immigrants navigate the immigration system in the United States. Originally from West Virginia, Cutlip holds a Bachelor's degree in Spanish and International Relations from Bucknell University, and she went to law school at Northeastern University.
Twenty years ago, many people were not familiar with indications of domestic violence, Cutlip said, but now more people recognize when something is not right in a home and are more apt to report a problem to the police or a church. Human trafficking is a problem people are only beginning to recognize, she said, adding that she hopes more people will come forward if they think they know about cases of forced labor, slavery, or abused and captive mail-order brides.
"I love my work," she said. "I wish in some ways that our organization didn't have to exist, because that would mean there wasn't violence in the world. But because there is, I'm glad that we're able to be here."
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