Is Domestic Violence Private?

When it comes to immigration, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has not been reluctant to assert the powers of his office. With his decision, announced Monday, to virtually eliminate domestic violence as grounds for asylum, he summarily swept away more than two decades of hard-fought legal cases and painstaking decisions by immigration judges and appeals courts that favored women who were victims.

In a speech to immigration judges just before his decision was published, Sessions framed it as part of his drive to thwart migrants from Central America coming to the southwest border and to reduce drastically a backlog of more