A woman who claims she was assaulted by her boyfriend is now in a detention center in Louisiana after he called the police to accuse her of assault and then contacted Immigration and Customs Enforcement and told them she didn’t have legal immigration status, the woman’s mother alleged to Noticias Telemundo.
In a separate case from April, a Salvadoran woman in Houston called 911 to report being a victim of domestic violence. Legal records reviewed by the Houston Chronicle indicate that police then called ICE.
The women’s stories are not unique, activists and experts tell Noticias Telemundo, explaining that in some cases abusers use immigration status to control or abuse their victims — who come from all socioeconomic backgrounds. Experts say victims are more fearful now amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and recent immigration raids.
Isaret Jeffers, founder of the Tree Collective, which supports farmworkers in the Tampa, Florida, area, said several undocumented women farmworkers have told her they’re enduring abuse from their partners for fear that reporting them will lead to their deportation.
Isabel Martínez, manager of the social services program at the Tahirih Justice Center, focused on helping victims of gender-based violence, said women fear that “not only will nothing happen to the abuser, but now I will have to be deported, or be detained, or get into trouble if I call the police.”
Since January, Martínez said, women have told her organization that they’d decided they couldn’t call the police and were too afraid to call the group because they feared it would have to call the police and report the abuse.
“Since the deportations began and they’re targeting people more severely, that’s where we’ve seen people become more afraid,” Martínez said. “They’re thinking twice about reporting.”
Though women represent 84% of victims of spousal abuse and 86% of victims of intimate partner abuse, according to the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Statistics, anyone can be a victim of abuse, regardless of gender, age, sexual orientation or national origin.
Fear of reporting — and deadly consequences
Immigrant victims’ fear of reporting crimes against them is not new. As early as 2019, the Tahirih Justice Center said its social workers had observed that women often refused to report gender-based violence for fear of deportation.
In a national survey released by the Alliance for Immigrant Survivors this June, 76% of immigrant advocates reported that victims of domestic violence were afraid to call the police for fear of ICE. It also found that half of immigration advocates had worked with immigrants who had dropped their criminal or civil cases for fear of deportation.
A similar study of two U.S. hospital emergency departments (one in San Francisco and one in Oakland, California) found almost 1 in 5 (19%) domestic violence victims avoided going to the police for fear that the police would report them to immigration authorities.
Francesco Duberli, CEO and founder of Survivors Pathway, a Miami-based center that offers counseling and legal help for survivors of domestic violence, sexual abuse and human trafficking, said that “what we’re seeing is an exaggerated, and also very sad, increase in the psychological aspect of being terrified of immigration authorities.”
ICE reopened the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) office, created during Trump’s first administration. Its main focus is to provide help to victims of crimes perpetrated by immigrants and to “acknowledge and serve the needs of victims and families who have been affected by crimes committed by individuals with a nexus to immigration violations,” according to its website.
Under one of the “frequently asked questions,” it states that it “provides releasable information to all victims of crime with a nexus to immigration, regardless of the immigration status of the victim.” Noticias Telemundo contacted ICE and the Department of Homeland Security about the office, but didn’t receive a response. VOICE said it did not have a spokesperson available and referred any questions to its website.
A failure to report domestic abuse can have fatal consequences: More than 50% of homicides committed by intimate partners were preceded by violence, and in cases where the victim is a woman, the figure rises to 75%, according to studies by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In Houston, an immigrant woman who is not being identified because she fears reprisals told Noticias Telemundo of a November 2024 incident in which she felt her life was in danger. She recalled clutching the steering wheel while driving as her partner was grabbing it and threatening to kill her. She said the man, who is her child’s father and had been drinking, poured a drink on her and then punched her in the stomach and later in the head, rendering her unconscious for a time.
She said she later drove to a friend’s house, called the police and reported the violence. The police arrested him, and upon his release from jail on that charge, he was detained by ICE and eventually deported. In November, following the violent episode, the woman, a Mexican immigrant, applied for a U visa for victims of crimes such as domestic violence, and is awaiting its approval.
Immigrant victims’ challenges, risks
Certain factors make it hard for immigrant victims of domestic violence to leave or report their abusive situations, including being financially dependent on their abuser and having children who depend on them.
The Houston woman’s partner threatened to take away her son, and the stress affected both her and her baby. “That was the saddest part of this whole process,” the woman said. “He was a baby, he was a 1 1/2-year-old. If I didn’t eat, he didn’t want to eat either. He knew when I was sad. He knew when I was crying. And you say, ‘How could such a little person know I’m sick?’”
Leaving a partner and filing a complaint with the court system “requires reflection and asking, ‘What’s going to happen next? How do I pay the rent? How do I feed my children?’” said Duberli, of Survivors Pathway. If the children belong to the abuser, he can file for legal custody, which can cost thousands of dollars.
“It’s a conglomeration of socioeconomic and psychological factors, and when you put them all together, you realize they become an immense wall that prevents immigrants from seeking justice,” he said.
Low-income women have a higher incidence of domestic violence. Of the women who sought legal assistance after experiencing intimate partner violence, 85% lived at or below 200% of the federal poverty level, according to a 2024 study by the University of Cambridge.
Victims also fear that their partner will attack them further if they report it, or they feel ashamed and believe they’re to blame for their situation. A key factor, according to therapists, is victims’ self-esteem: As the Texas immigrant woman described it, “Feeling like you’re nobody” as psychological abuse escalates, with taunts like “What are you going to do without me?” and “How are you going to get ahead?” she said.
Some victims have suffered abuse in home countries where domestic violence is more normalized and they’re used to abusers having impunity, Duberli said.
Martínez, of the Tahirih Justice Center, said the first step to leaving an abusive relationship is to break the strong psychological control the perpetrator can have over the victim. “You don’t deserve abuse,” she said.
It’s also common for immigrant victims to lack a support network of family or friends in a country with a foreign culture and language.
Some immigrants face greater risk if they rely on an abusive spouse to obtain legal status, as the American Immigration Council (AIC) has stated on its website, since abusers can use immigration status as a “tool to silence their victims” and may delay, withdraw or fail to file petitions for their relatives or threaten to report them to authorities.
Emergency exits: The U visa and the VAWA petition
For victims of violent crimes such as domestic abuse who can demonstrate cooperation with authorities in the investigation or prosecution of the crime, there is the U visa. If approved, the applicant receives a work permit valid for four years, and after three years, they can apply for permanent residence (green card).
However, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recently told Noticias Telemundo that “a good faith determination on a pending application for U nonimmigrant status does not protect a foreign national from immigration enforcement.”
Duberli said victims can also file a petition under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Those who file a complaint, Duberli explains, can continue their immigration process without the abuser’s involvement or knowledge.
In the case of the Texas immigrant woman, she cooperated with authorities regarding the crime, a key step to getting her U visa status approved and regularized.
For now, the woman said, “I continue working on myself, on my self-esteem — I continue with everything. Moving forward.”
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 8788.
An earlier version of this story was first published in Noticias Telemundo.
