Shearman & Sterling successfully helped a 13-year old client from El Salvador receive an affirmative grant of asylum from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (a component of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security). The firm partnered with the local affiliate of non-profit organization Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) on the case. 

The client was a 13-year old female from El Salvador who came to the United States as an unaccompanied child at only 10 years old.  Her asylum claim was based on past persecution and reasonable fear of future persecution due to her membership in a particular social group, namely membership in her immediate family and as a Salvadoran female.  This affirmative grant of asylum proves invaluable, not only to the client herself, but to other asylum seekers with family-based asylum claims, which have met intense scrutiny in recent years from the current administration.  The Shearman team as well as KIND hope that this successful asylum application will lay the groundwork for future asylum seekers with similar family- and gender-based claims.