Victims of Genital Mutilation Face Deportation

A federal appeals court in Manhattan will hear arguments tomorrow on whether three women who were forced to undergo genital mutilation in West Africa should be granted safe harbor in America.

A decision in the case, by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, will decide whether female immigrants to New York who have had parts of their genitalia removed in accordance with the custom of their native countries are protected against deportation.

In addition to the issue of genital mutilation, the three women whose cases will be heard say they were also victims of political persecution in their native country of Guinea. One of them, Salimatou Bah, 44, claims that in 2003 she was jailed for attending a political meeting of a party that opposed the ruling government. She was raped by officers in her cell, according to court papers she filed. Later that year she left her four sons and daughter, who now live in Guinea with her uncle, to come to America on a Senegalese passport belonging to someone else.

In court papers, Ms. Bah claims that her uncle has told her over the telephone that he is under pressure to have Ms. Bah's daughter, now 12, undergo genital cutting.

"I told them not to circumcise her because I know what I went through," Ms. Bah told an immigration judge, adding that the procedure led her to have medical and sexual complications, according to the court record. Ms. Bah underwent the procedure at 11 with the approval of her own mother, according to her testimony.

The two other women whose appeals also will be heard were cut at the age of 8. All three are members of the Fulani ethnic group.

The federal government began deportation proceedings against Ms. Bah in 2005 on the grounds that she entered the country without proper documentation. The government argues that because women such as Ms. Bah are made to undergo genital mutilation only a single time, those who already have had the procedure forced on them lack a claim against being returned to their native country.

"Bah was subjected to FGM," an immigration lawyer for the Justice Department, Jessica Sherman, wrote to the court, using the initials for female genital mutilation, "which cannot be repeated in the future."

Neither Ms. Bah, nor her lawyer, Ronald Salomon, could be reached for comment yesterday.

In this country, cutting away parts of female genitalia is a felony punishable by five years in prison. There is an exception for procedures deemed medically necessary.