About 20 years ago, one of Katherine McKenzie's colleagues asked her if she was interested in performing forensic medical evaluations (FME) for asylum seekers.
"I didn't know much about the field, but she mentored me for the first one or two evaluations," said McKenzie, who is now an associate professor of medicine (general medicine) at Yale School of Medicine and director of the Yale Center for Asylum Medicine. "After that, I realized that this was an area that was deeply rewarding and that I wanted to incorporate it into my professional life."
McKenzie started seeing asylum clients regularly. Eventually, she asked her section chief of general internal medicine if there might be an opportunity to create a center specifically for this kind of work. That's how the Yale Center for Asylum Medicine was born.
Since 2003, the center has offered FMEs and examinations for 25 to 30 asylum seekers annually, documenting cases of physical and psychological trauma due to persecution based on race, religion, political opinion, nationality, or membership in a particular social group. The asylum seekers who are seen by YCAM may have experienced unlawful detention, torture, harassment, domestic violence, female genital mutilation and homophobic hate crimes, and most often come from countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, and South America.
While referrals generally are made from attorneys for asylum seekers - including lawyers from Yale Law School, other laws schools, and advocacy groups - the doctors' role is not as advocates, but as impartial evaluators of the nature and extent of injury exhibited.
The doctors' objective findings are then shared with the client's attorney in the form of affidavits and/or testimony to be used in immigration court.
