SAN DIEGO _ For the first time in a decade, fewer people are applying for a visa designed to protect immigrant crime victims _ a trend that advocates and immigration lawyers say is fueled by policies the Trump administration put in place to clamp down on illegal immigration.
The visa _ officially known as the U visa _ was created by Congress in 2000 to encourage people to cooperate with local law enforcement while offering them some relief in the form of legal immigration status. The visa was meant to stop abusers from using a victim's immigration status as a way of preventing them from reporting crimes.
In order to obtain a U visa, crime victims need to show that they cooperated with a local law enforcement agency when applying for the visa.
Data shows that after years of increased popularity (U visa applications increased by 137% between fiscal years 2009 and 2017), the number of U visa applications declined for the first time in fiscal year 2018; a trend that is on pace to continue this year.
In fiscal year 2017, USCIS received a record-high 62,990 U visa applications. Last year, the agency received 58,991 applications. This year, they are on pace to receive 49,508 applications, according to USCIS data.
"I think the U Visa is a critical form of relief both to aid law enforcement and also provide humanitarian protection for survivors of serious crime in our country and this administration is creating barriers to that," said Alison Kamhi, supervising attorney for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
Through a series of policy memos and decisions by the attorney general, the Trump administration has made applying for a U visa more expensive and more likely for applicants who are denied to get deported. They have also limited immigration judges' ability to delay deportations proceedings while U Visas are processed, records show.
The goal of those memos and decisions has been to fulfill the president's goal of decreasing illegal immigration.
For example, a June 2018 memo directs officials to place immigrants who are denied U visas in deportation proceedings. That memo is a direct result of the president's Executive Order 13768, which "emphasizes that enforcement of our immigration laws is critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States. The Executive Order also provides that the Federal Government will no longer exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement," according to the memo.
Critics of the memo say crime victims will think twice about applying for the U visa because receiving a deportation notice if the visa is denied is very risky.
In August 2018, the Office of the Attorney General wrote an order that narrowed judges' authority to delay deportation cases in order to wait for an individual's U visa application to be processed.
Before that order, immigration judges would place deportations on hold to wait and see if an applicant received a U visa. The thinking was that it didn't make sense to deport somebody if they were going to be allowed back into the country after receiving the visa.
Immigration lawyers said some people have already been deported while their U visa is pending. That violates the spirit of what the visa stands for _ which is to protect crime victims.
However, the attorney general's memo states that too many cases were being put on hold and that was contributing to the growing case backlog in immigration courts.
"In 2012, the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General concluded that 'frequent and lengthy continuances' were a 'primary factor' contributing to delays in immigration courts," the order states.
These memos come at a time when there is a growing backlog of U visa applications. Because the number of visas granted each year is capped at 10,000 the backlog grows every year. Currently, there are 239,000 pending U visas that have already been approved.
The backlog is so large that it takes USCIS more than four years to process new applications.
During that waiting period, applicants who are undocumented have no protection from deportations and cannot get a work permit.
"The fact that an application is pending for four years and provides no formal protection from removal, no access to work authorization, that is a disservice to the victims," said Cecelia Friedman Levin, senior policy counsel for the nonprofit ASISTA Immigration Assistance.
Several U visa applicants have been deported while their applications were pending, and Friedman Levin is concerned that the number of deportees will increase.
The Trump administration's policy changes coupled with the growing backlog are discouraging immigrant crime victims from applying for this form of protection, according to lawyers and advocates.
"It's very sad because that is contrary to the whole purpose of this visa," said San Diego-based immigration attorney Ashley Arcidiacono.
While USCIS maintains national data on the number of U Visa applications they receive, approve and deny, data on the local level is not readily available.
In 2015, California passed a state law requiring local law enforcement agencies to submit an annual report on the number of U visa certification requests they receive. These certifications are required by visa applicants to show USCIS that they cooperated with a crime and police departments certified that a crime actually took place.
However, there is no penalty for failing to submit the annual report and several police and sheriff's departments are not complying with the law, records show.
The San Diego Union-Tribune filed a records request with the state legislatures for all annual reports the legislature received from law enforcement agencies in San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties in 2017 and 2018.
Those records showed that only 11 agencies submitted records both years. Fourteen agencies, including the San Diego Police Department, submitted records for 2017 but not 2018.
The San Diego Police Department did not immediately respond to questions about why the department appears to be noncompliant with state law.
"I do find it troubling that not every certifier is providing data," said Kamhi. "Because there is no enforcement mechanism (in the state law), this is the only way for us to see how certificating agencies are responding."
One of the few agencies that submitted records to the state legislature for 2017 and 2018 was the Los Angeles Police Department. The department's data mirrored national trends in that the department saw fewer applications. In 2017, the LAPD received 2,587 U visa certification applications. The following year the department only received 2,243 _ a 13% decrease.
