Eight percent of the world's refugees are women and their dependent children. While women seeking political asylum often fit the mold of the asylum seeker who has been arrested, tortured or faces persecution for opposing government policies, women also face oppression directly related to their gender. Forced marriage, force sterilization and abortion, domestic violence, and harmful practices like female genital mutilation, all occur in life's private sphere. Women are the victims of rape and other sexual torture at the hands of soldiers and officials in retaliation for the political activity of male family members, and when men leave home to fight wars, often become targets, as in Bosnia and Haiti. Over the past decade, women's organizations, asylum advocates and human rights activists have pressured governments and international organization like the UN and the OAS to examine how women are harmed because they are women. As a consequence, gender-related human rights abuse began to be recognized as criteria for asylum. In 1995 the US Immigration and Naturalization Service issued gender guidelines, which were the first formal recognition of rape, domestic abuse and other forms of violence against women as potential ground for asylum. In 1996, Fauziya Kassinga of Togo was granted asylum in a precedent-setting decision by the highest administrative tribunal in the US immigration system, which recognized that cutting off a woman's clitoris against her will is an act of persecution. Yet these hard-won gains are precarious at best. Treatment of women asylum seekers remains inconsistent. Some who make claims similar to those already granted continue to be denied. Often women who have their dreams of shelter are immediately handcuffed, shackled and transported to prisons where they are detained, sometimes for years, awaiting legal representation and hearings on their claims. Parole is almost never granted, even when a refugee has family members who have legally immigrated to the US. The INS doesn't release specific figures, but it is estimated that they currently are holding 16,000 immigrants in detention, 7,000 of which are women. It is estimated that 2,000 of them are seeking asylum. The INS operates as an independent agency of the Federal government, with no oversight or appeal process and little public accountability. It is our goal, through bringing individual stories of asylum seekers to film and video, to shed light on this dark corner of US immigration policy.