 Fauziya <unk> was a <unk> teenager who fled her native land in 1994 to escape from a forced polygamous marriage and a tribal practice of female genital cutting . She went through Ghana and Germany before arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey , where she was detained and incarcerated by INS officials . She spent the next year and a half in various prisons throughout the Eastern United States while her legal team attempted to obtain asylum for her . In a case that made history in immigration law , she was finally granted asylum in June 1996 by the Board of Immigration Appeals . Gender @-@ based violence had been established as grounds for seeking asylum in the U.S. 
