Several years ago, when I was a cops reporter at a Florida newspaper, a source told me about something called the U visa.

Created 20 years ago by Congress, it’s a special visa that gives temporary status to immigrant crime victims. It’s also a crime fighting tool for police, the source told me, because it encourages undocumented residents to call law enforcement without the fear of being deported. The only thing the police had to do was sign a form, called a certification, which confirms the victim was helpful in an investigation.

Without this five-page form, victims can’t even apply for the visa.

Through the years, I’d heard stories of police agencies that were resistant to signing these certifications. I began to wonder: how often did police stonewall victims from applying for this federal relief? For the past 10 months, I’ve worked to answer this question by talking to dozens of immigration lawyers, police officials, experts and immigrant crime victims. I sifted through hundreds of police records. I also contacted more than 100 agencies across the U.S. that serve large immigrant communities to learn how they handle these kinds of requests from victims.

Here’s what I found: Nearly 1 in 4 of these departments create barriers never envisioned under the U visa law. 

Four agencies refuse to sign off on any requests from victims. “It’s just not something that we’re signing off on right now,” a police sergeant in Yonkers, New York, told me.

At least 20 others have created their own internal rules that go beyond the federal guidelines. For instance, some agencies won’t sign unless an arrest has been made, leaving many victims whose cases are unsolved without options. Others wait until the case has gone to trial, even though the U visa is designed to help victims while they’re in contact with the criminal justice system.

“Law enforcement holds that power,” Florida immigration attorney Kathlyn Mackovjak told me. 

Even agencies that say they certify rarely do. The city of Miami Police Department rejected about 90 percent of the 235 requests it received between 2016 and 2018. They also denied Nataly Alcantara’s request.

In November 2014, two women broke into Alcantara’s Miami home while she slept with her husband, toddler son and baby daughter, police reports show. One of the robbers pointed a gun at Alcantara’s daughter. They took $300 and two cell phones. When the women left, Alcantara immediately called 911 from a roommate’s phone, even though she was undocumented. For months, she helped police as much as she could, answering their questions, looking at photo lineups of potential suspects, and even calling her own stolen phone to see if the suspects would answer. When they did, she told investigators.

But when Alcantara asked for a signature on her U visa certification request, the department declined in a one-page letter. “An agency’s decision,” the letter read, “is entirely discretionary.”

Alcantara fled her native Honduras when local gangs threatened to kill her son if she didn’t give them half her paycheck. She reported the threats to police, but nothing came of her reports. In the United States, Alcantara was searching for a safe place to raise her kids. The police here are different, she thought.

“I thought they were like in the movies,” she said. “Everything gets solved quickly and they arrest the burglars or murderers. I thought it was the same in real life.”

That changed after she received Miami police denial letter.

“The truth is,” she said, “they’re the same in every country.”

Read the story here.
 

AN UPDATE ON OUR STORY ABOUT NEW SHELTER PROVIDERS

This summer, we partnered with WRAL News on an investigation into the government’s plan to send migrant children to shelter providers with little experience and troubling track records.

Among the facilities is New Horizon Group Home in North Carolina. Our colleagues at WRAL learned that one of New Horizon Group Home’s locations was shut down by North Carolina officials last year after inspectors found conditions inside that presented “an imminent danger” to the children. Despite its troubling history, the federal government awarded New Horizon $4 million to open a shelter for unaccompanied youth.

Since our story published, state officials denied New Horizon’s application for a license to run the shelter. And now, Democratic lawmakers are demanding answers about the government’s decision to contract with New Horizon.

From WRAL’s story:

In a letter to Jonathan Hayes, acting director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Democratic Reps. David Price, or North Carolina, and Rosa DeLauro, of Connecticut, demanded answers about how the federal agency awards contracts to companies for the care of kids detained alone or separated from their families at the border.

They also want specifics about how much money New Horizon has actually received under the grant, a cooperative agreement with the agency for nearly three years of "residential childcare support services," and whether the government will attempt to recoup those funds.

"There's a question here of fiscal responsibility, but there are much larger questions of immigration policy and the way people are being treated – and whether it's worthy of our country," Price said in a phone interview Wednesday.
 

Read the story here.

HOW THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS TIGHTENING TEMPORARY WORK VISAS

The Trump administration says it wants to “hire American,” so it’s been increasingly denying applications for H1-B visas, which are temporary work permits filed by companies that want to hire high-skilled immigrants when there’s a shortage of American workers.

The denial rate for first-time applications increased from 10 percent in 2016 to 24 percent in 2019.

But reporter Sinduja Rangarajan has uncovered that many of these denials are being overturned by appeals officials at a record rate. Between 2014 and 2017, about 3 percent of the H-1B decisions were reversed. But in 2018, appeals officials overruled nearly 15 percent of H1-B appeals.

Lawyers told Rangarajan that many of the applications do qualify for the visas, but are being improperly denied in the first place. 

From the story: 

Bruce Morrison, a former Congress member from Connecticut who co-sponsored the Immigration Act of 1990, which established the H-1B program, says the administration’s actions are violating the spirit of the program. “Attacking legal immigration is kind of a stealth strategy,” he says. “It’s one in which people who are just listening to the news are easily seduced into thinking this is all about protecting the border or protecting our security or making sure the people who are here are here legally. But in fact this is a wholesale isolationist administration. It doesn’t like anything that isn’t stamped ‘Made in America,’ whether it’s the individuals or whether it’s the products.”

Read the story here.

3 THINGS WE’RE READING

1. Migrant children who are waiting with their families in Mexico for their asylum court hearings are crossing the border by themselves. (The Intercept)

Along the Mexican border, families are living in overcrowded encampments as they await decisions on their asylum cases. But some children have decided to cross the border alone and take their chances in the custody of the U.S. government.

The kicker: A teenager named Yolani is one of those who crossed alone. Amid a teeming, jury-rigged camp in Matamoros, the Mexican city just across from Brownsville, Texas, 46-year-old Danilo Ruiz was picking his way through the warren of tents and people when a fellow asylum-seeker gave him the news: His daughter had just left Mexico. Without her father’s consent, Yolani had walked northward by herself, into the United States.
 

2. The government is piloting a secret program that would fast-track asylum cases in 10 days or less. (The Washington Post)

The pilot program, called Prompt Asylum Claim Review, is currently being tested in El Paso. Lawyers and advocates say it violates due process because attorneys are only allowed to speak to their clients by phone. 

The kicker: “This is yet another example of Border Patrol carrying out a pilot project in secret, circumventing Congress and public scrutiny,” said Astrid Dominguez, director of the ACLU’s Border Rights Center. “Border Patrol is fast-tracking deportations while holding migrants at detention facilities . . . and barring oversight to ensure fair and humane treatment. Given Border Patrol’s track record of abuse, the last thing the agency should be allowed to do is shove migrants through a life-or-death decision-making process devoid of basic due-process protections.”

3. The Trump administration continues to separate children from their families at the border. (The Guardian)

Seven months ago, border officers separated a 23-year-old Guatemalan woman from her six-year-old niece. Their case highlights the ongoing family separation crisis that not only affects parents and their children, but extended family members as well. 

The kicker: The six-year-old girl on the other end of the line tells Alexa she fears they will never be together again. In another 15-minute phone call, she questions if Alexa still loves her. She asks Alexa to pick her up from the family she’s staying with in New York. Alexa hears the girl say the words in Spanish: “You are my mom, I want to be with you.” Alexa wishes she could go get her. But Alexa’s locked up 2,400 miles away, at an immigration detention center in Arizona.

Your tips have been vital to our immigration coverage. Keep them coming: [email protected]. 

– Laura C. Morel

Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.