October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and this year, survivor groups are speaking out against Trump administration policies they said put immigrant victims in danger.
The immigration crackdown has ratcheted up the fear victims face, leading people to avoid police and to fear showing up to a courthouse, even to pursue a restraining order.
Carmen McDonald, executive director of the Survivor Justice Center in Los Angeles, said they have had clients cancel restraining orders for fear of being reported to ICE.
“This is not just a humanitarian crisis. It’s a public safety crisis,” McDonald asserted. “When survivors are silenced, abusers go free. When immigrants are too afraid to call police, everyone is less safe.”
McDonald encouraged victims to seek out confidential hotlines and legal aid groups, and ask parents to make a plan for their children’s care, should the parents be deported. The Trump administration defends its policies, saying they are necessary to deter illegal immigration.
Morgan Weibel, director of client advocacy and legal services at the Tahirih Justice Center in San Bruno, which provides free legal and social services to immigrant survivors of gender-based violence, said the Trump administration has made it much harder for immigrant victims of domestic violence to apply for residency, despite protections in the Violence Against Women Act.
“The government’s efforts to narrow gender-based survivors’ abilities to access legal protections in the U.S., through restrictive policies and antiquated interpretations of domestic violence, are very concerning,” Weibel stressed.
Weibel added in the past, if the government denied a visa to a person who applied under the Violence Against Women Act, the person was left without any status but was not deported. Now the administration is automatically placing them into removal proceedings.
