Campaign Action
The Trump administration has been a safe haven for abusers, including the president himself, who has been accused of sexual assault by no less than 15 women. Last year, former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was charged with battery for grabbing a reporter’s arm. And in 1996, former chief strategist Steve Bannon was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence and battery after his former wife “claimed he pulled at her neck and wrist during an altercation over their finances.” Charges were ultimately dropped against both men. But it’s not just former Trump associates who are getting away with abuse. The Los Angeles Times reports that fearing his mass deportation dragnet, the number of Latinos reporting domestic abuse to local law enforcement and courts has plummeted:
In the first six months of 2017, reports of domestic violence have declined among Latino residents in some of California’s largest cities, a retreat that crisis professionals say is driven by a fear that interacting with police or entering a courthouse could make immigrants easy targets for deportation.
In Los Angeles, Latinos reported 3.5% fewer instances of spousal abuse in the first six months of the year compared with 2016, while reporting among non-Latino victims was virtually unchanged, records show. That pattern extends beyond Los Angeles to cities such as San Francisco and San Diego, which recorded even steeper declines of 18% and 13%, respectively.
“They’re afraid of us,” said Los Angeles County sheriff’s Deputy Marino Gonzalez. “And the reason they’re afraid of us is because they think we’re going to deport them. They don’t know that we don’t deport them; we don’t ask for their immigration status.” And it’s a pattern that has gone beyond Los Angeles—San Diego, Houston, and San Francisco have all reported a drop in domestic violence reporting in Latino communities while non-Latino reporting has remained unchanged. “The decline among Latinos in San Diego was more than double the overall citywide decrease, records show. In San Francisco, the reporting decline among Latinos was nearly triple the citywide decrease.”
“In April, Houston police Chief Art Acevedo said the number of Latino victims reporting sexual assault had dropped 42% in his city. In Denver, at least nine women abandoned pursuit of restraining orders against their abusers after immigration enforcement agents were filmed making an arrest in a city courthouse earlier this year, according to City Atty. Kristi Bronson”:
Claude Arnold, who oversaw [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] operations in Southern California from 2010 to 2015, said misconceptions about the agency may be driving the downswing. Crime victims are far more likely to receive a visa application than a removal order by reporting an attack, he said.
“ICE still has a policy that we don’t pursue removal proceedings against victims or witnesses of crime, and I haven’t seen any documented instances where that actually happened,” he said. “To a great degree, we facilitate those people having legal status in the U.S.”
But this is a lie. Among the immigrants arrested during the first ICE sweeps of the Trump administration was an undocumented transgender woman who had gone to court to secure a protective order against an abuser. When the woman exited the courtroom, she was taken into custody by ICE agents. Advocates believe her abuser may have tipped them off on where she’d be:
“We were stunned that ICE would go to these lengths for someone that is not a violent criminal,” said [county attorney Jo Anne] Bernal.
Bernal said this has not happened in the over 20 years that she has been serving in the El Paso County Courthouse.
“I cannot recall an instance where ICE agents have gone into the domestic violence court, specifically looking for a victim of domestic violence,” Bernal said.
While California has just signed into law a landmark anti-deportation bill that prohibits local resources from being used to aid Trump’s mass deportation force, ICE is now threatening to double-down on enforcement actions in the state in a vindictive act of vengeance. Let this administration claim all it wants that it’s pro-law enforcement, but when it comes to police who actually do want to build trust among immigrant communities in particular, Trump, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, and ICE are actively undermining them. This will only result in more abusers staying free because their victims are too afraid to ask for help.