ICE Announces New Victim-Centered Policy, Showing a Favorable Shift Toward Vulnerable Immigrants

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) introduced this week a brand new coverage designed to honor and shield weak immigrants. The brand new coverage addresses protections for survivors of violence, trafficking, and home abuse.

Issued on August 11, the coverage states that ICE will train prosecutorial discretion “to facilitate entry to justice and victim-based immigration advantages by noncitizen crime victims.” Amongst different issues, ICE will chorus from enforcement actions, absent distinctive circumstances, till U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Companies (USCIS) makes a closing or interim choice on an utility for immigration advantages.

Importantly, the memo defines “enforcement actions” broadly to constrain ICE, in most circumstances, from taking the next actions in opposition to people with pending functions for victim-based protections:

• Issuing detainers.
• Issuing a Discover to Seem, the charging doc in immigration court docket proceedings.
• Stopping, questioning, or arresting a person.
• Detention.
• Executing a removing order; i.e., deportation from america.

The brand new coverage additionally constrains ICE from taking enforcement actions throughout a pending legal investigation or prosecution, until approved by headquarters officers. It places the onus on ICE to establish victims “as quickly as practicable.”

U.S. immigration legal guidelines present quite a few types of safety for noncitizens who’re the victims of home violence, trafficking, or different qualifying crimes. These legal guidelines, whereas relevant to each women and men, had been largely handed to guard crimes in opposition to ladies and women.

The Violence In opposition to Girls Act (VAWA) of 1994 included provisions that permit noncitizen victims of home violence to acquire immigration reduction unbiased of their abusive partner or dad or mum. The Battered Immigrant Girls Safety Act of 2000 (VAWA 2000) created new types of immigration reduction for noncitizen victims of violent crime (U visas) and victims of sexual assault or trafficking (T visas). The brand new coverage additionally applies to candidates for Particular Immigrant Juvenile Standing, who’re younger individuals who had been abused, uncared for, or deserted by a number of dad and mom.

ICE’s announcement comes on the heels of different constructive victim-centered actions from the federal government. In June, USCIS introduced a brand new coverage to expedite functions for U visas. ICE additionally just lately launched a brand new hotline for victims.

The brand new coverage supersedes a 2019 memorandum that made it harder for U visa holders to entry prosecutorial discretion, resembling launch from detention and deferral of removing.

The coverage acknowledges the aim of many humanitarian and survivor-based immigration protections:

“When victims have entry to humanitarian safety, no matter their immigration standing, and may really feel protected in coming ahead, it strengthens the power of native, state, and federal regulation enforcement businesses, together with ICE, to detect, examine, and prosecute crimes.”

This new announcement isn’t just a shift in coverage, however a shift in tone and philosophy for an company that has historically forged a skeptical eye to all undocumented migrants, no matter their standing as survivors. Whereas it’s but to be seen how this can play out within the discipline—a stumbling block for a lot of new immigrant-friendly insurance policies—this can be a constructive growth for a few of the most weak migrants.

FILED UNDER: Home Violence, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U visa