Lawsuit alleges the Trump administration unlawfully deported human trafficking and domestic violence victims despite pending protective visas

essentialsaltes said:

She helped get her violent husband deported. Then ICE deported her — straight into his arms.​

Carmen’s [not her real name] abusive husband came home drunk one night last summer. He pounded and kicked the door. He threatened to kill her as her young son watched in horror. She called police, eventually obtaining a restraining order. Months later he returned and beat her again. Police came again and he was eventually deported.

Thinking she finally escaped his cruelty, Carmen applied for what is known as a U-Visa. The visa provides crime victims a way to stay in the United States legally, but the Trump administration has routinely ignored pending applications.

During a regular immigration check-in in June, Carmen was detained. Two months later, she was put on a plane with her 8-year-old son, who just completed second grade. She was headed to her home country, terrified her husband would find her.

She emerged from the plane to her nightmare.

“I saw a man standing across from us and my heart sank,” she said. “It was my husband.”

“My husband told me it was such a coincidence that he was there when we arrived,” she said. “I knew he was lying. He had found that we were being deported and he was there to take us.

“I had no choice, I had nowhere else to go and there was no one speaking up for me.”

Now she says she is even more trapped than before.

He took her passports, so she can’t travel.

Lawyers for Carmen along with several immigrant victims of human trafficking, domestic violence and other crimes last month sued the Trump administration in the Central District of California for detaining and deporting survivors with pending visa applications, some of whom have been granted status to stay and sometimes work.

The administration’s actions affect nearly half a million immigrants who are awaiting a decision on a pending application for survivor-based protections, the most common of which is the U-Visa. Because Congress capped the number of visas that can be issued annually at 10,000, it can take a person 20 years to have their application processed.

The lawsuit argues the administration violated procedural rules in referencing the executive order “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” as the main justification for the policy.

Gotta hit those quotas somehow.

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