I had a case once that involved a man who had arrived in the U.S. several years before his wife. He arrived here after swimming the Rio Grande, worked hard, got amnesty under a federal program, and eventually was awarded with naturalized citizenship. He opened a restaurant, and the American dream became his reality. Eventually he held his hand out across the border to his wife, and she came to join him.
He began to beat her almost immediately, and this evidently continued through both pregnancies and past when the youngest child entered first grade. The children had been born in America, so they held U.S. citizenship. The husband had gained his citizenship. Mom was the only “illegal” in the family, and he reminded her of that each and every day.
He held this fact over her head constantly, often threatening that he would call Immigration officials if she didn’t obey him. She was absolutely convinced that U.S. citizenship came with the extra benefit of direct access to federal law enforcement agents who were sitting around waiting for someone like her husband to call and inform on her.
This was especially terrifying because their children were U.S. citizens. She knew that deportation meant they would be left at the mercy of a man she’d come to realize was monstrous. Part of her decision to stay for as long as she had was her belief that her husband could have her sent out of the country on a whim, and that her children would become his next victims. For years she chose to endure his physical and sexual assaults so that her children would not have to.
To make matters worse, he routinely sabotaged her efforts to gain citizenship herself, either by “losing” her paperwork, making anonymous calls that she was using illegal drugs to Immigration officials who were actually trying to help her, or simply refusing to take her to scheduled English classes and appointments. He already controlled the pocket book, her ability to communicate with her friends and family, her transportation options, and then he added the wrinkle of controlling her very ability to stay in the same country with her children. No wonder it took her so long to ask for help.
During one episode he slammed her hand in a car door. That incident was the first one ever witnessed by anyone outside their family, and it was the first time the police had ever been notified. The person who dialed 911 from a pay phone refused to leave a name and left before we got there, so there were no witnesses, but the call helped in finally allowing a police agency to get involved.
I remember that she was absolutely terrified of all of us. We were large, armed men with tremendous authority over her life right then, and she must have seen us as Gestapo. Her husband kept yelling that he was going to have her deported, that she had spent her last night on American soil. Her lips quivered, and her eyes stayed filled but not spilling for the first two hours.
She believed him, of course. She had it in her head that American citizenship came with a secret pass or power to have others jailed and deported because he’d told her so many, many times. She firmly believed that her husband, by all rights an extraordinary spirit for all that he’d overcome and accomplished, had friends in high places that were a phone call away from tearing her from their children. He’d begun a pattern of abuse toward the boys of late, but she’d been able to distract him from them and get him to hit her instead for some time. She shuddered imagining what would happen to them if she weren’t there to shield them from a man she’d come to accept as an abusive monster.
Truth was, I felt a little stuck. The guy didn’t have the swing he’d convinced her he had, but he would definitely be able to make a phone call to federal immigration authorities once he bonded out of jail. If he was successful in his plans, she’d be deported and there would be no witness to confront him at trial. The charges would have to be dropped, and he’d reign supreme and unchallenged over two little boys. This did not feel like justice.
That’s when I learned about the U-visa. U-visas are a direct extension of the federal Violence Against Women Act of 1994. Several strategies were employed under this act including more police officer training, more shelters and long-term housing for victims of domestic violence, and more funding for batterer’s intervention programs across the country. The U-visa has turned out to be a nifty little idea designed to keep witnesses of violent or felony crimes in this country so that they can participate in removing hardened criminals from communities without having to worry about deportation.
The short version of how this works is that if an undocumented immigrant witnesses a serious crime, he or she has the opportunity to petition the U.S. government for the visa, which protects them from the deportation process during the length of the investigation and through prosecution. For assisting in removing say, a drug dealer from the streets, a gang member, or a violent or sexual predator, they are then afforded a chance at staying in this country long enough to earn naturalized citizenship.
This is not instant citizenship, and the whole process can still take years, but it offers a real incentive for someone who is frightened and fed up to come forward and be offered a whole basket of protections. Witnesses to crimes are already afforded police protection and protection under state and federal law, and now they can also be protected from removal from the country. This is obviously good for them because they don’t have to hide or cringe every time they see a cop, and it is good for law enforcement because we keep a witness that will help us restore or maintain safe streets and homes.
The obvious crack in this plan is that some people might manufacture a witness statement for the sole purpose of initiating a U-visa application. The only thing I can tell you is that there will always be flaws in a government bureaucracy, but this plan and process proves valuable time and time again. Yes, some people might try to scam the system, but it would be a risky move to make up a story about felony crimes and hope it stuck all the way through the conviction phase, because any discovery of illegitimacy would likely result in criminal charges and rapid deportation. Also, the victim advocates who generally make the referral tend to be very discerning in filing the U-visa applications and requesting the assistance of their local law enforcement agencies in completing the documentation. Those advocates don’t want to be seen as sending undeserving applicants our way, so they are often more strict and hesitant to file than are we.
The forms are a little long and tedious. Fortunately for us, law enforcement’s portion is short and simple. We are asked to sign a document confirming that the applicant was an important part of our investigation, and that he or she cooperated fully with that investigation. We then usually attach our police reports related to the matter and send it off for processing. This is a good thing because law enforcement officers tend to have too many pieces of paper on their desks anyway, so something we can sign and move out in two minutes makes us happy.
Make no mistake; if you are a violent criminal, a sexual predator, a thief, or a drug dealer, I want you gone. I want you in jail for your sentence and immediately deported afterwards. I want to know everything about you, including what friends and family you have in the area so my colleagues and I can round you up even faster if you ever sneak back in our country. I want Immigration officials to take a wife or child batterer as seriously as a member of an organized criminal conspiracy, and I want your life to be absolutely miserable while you scurry around in my country, trying to evade detection while preying on others.
However, if you’re a decent human being who somehow made it here from some other country in the simple hope of creating a better life for yourself or your children, I don’t want you to have to go about your day afraid of the police. Yes, I want you to apply for documentation and be identified (just as we are through social security, taxes, driver’s licenses, etc.). And, yes, I want you to go through the proper, admittedly long and bureaucratic process to earn citizenship here, just as I would if I were to choose to seek citizenship in another country. My new home country deserves that respect and show of allegiance.
Regardless of how or when you are identified, I want the message to be loud and clear that the police should and generally do recognize the difference between the severity of an undocumented worker and a drug dealer or a child molester. You just can’t reasonably put them in the same category. It would be like comparing a person speeding in her car to a person who steals cars. If you want to get anywhere with the intricate, deeply entrenched problems associated with immigration, you have to start from a foundation of common sense and respect for the diverse human condition. When you have that, you can participate in making sound, humane decisions that have the potential to improve individual lives, families, and entire communities.
People who are afraid and being preyed upon need police assistance. The alternative is for them to live in a form of slavery or to raise arms themselves in a form of vigilante justice. Many street gangs around today were formed as a result of a need for greater protection coupled with a lack of faith in local police. Neither of the alternatives is acceptable, so some mechanism for allowing oppressed people to come forward has to be allowed. Currently a part of that mechanism can be realized through the U-visa program and through police agencies and officers able to exercise discretion when it comes to reaching for the greater good.
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