The National Immigrant Justice Center, along with a pro bono attorney from the Chicago office of law firm Sidley Austin, won a victory today at the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The case, Oyekunle v. Gonzales, involved a woman who fled her native Nigeria because her husband's family threatened to force her to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM).

The decision offers some protection for adult women who face deportation into situations where they will be forced to suffer FGM. While most women subjected to FGM are victimized as children, some older women also are threatened with the procedure, which continues even in countries and regions where it has been outlawed. In the Seventh Circuit decision, Judge Richard Posner criticizes the immigration judge's and Board of Immigration Appeal's unreasonable reliance on U.S. State Department reports that focus solely on FGM practices against girls.

Read NIJC's full statment about the case here.