In a quiet Chicago neighborhood, the shadows of a young Venezuelan woman and her two children stretch across the sidewalk, a silent testament to the uncertainty and fear that have come to define their lives. Two years ago, she arrived in the United States seeking asylum, hoping for safety and a new beginning. But as of October 2025, her journey has become marked by loss and anxiety: last year, her partner was deported after a traffic stop for not having a valid driver’s license, leaving her to care for their children alone. Now, with increased U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and detainments sweeping through immigrant communities, she fears venturing outside, forced into a state of virtual hiding while she tries to figure out her next move. Her hope is to reunite with her partner in Colombia, but the inability to obtain a passport has left her plans in limbo, according to reporting by ProPublica.
Her story is far from unique. Across the United States, many immigrants who once believed legal avenues would protect them now find themselves caught in the crosshairs of a dramatically intensified immigration crackdown. The situation has become especially dire for those who are victims of domestic violence or human trafficking and are seeking protection under long-established U.S. laws—protections that, until recently, were considered sacrosanct by both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Yessenia Ruano’s experience encapsulates the difficult choices facing thousands of immigrants. Four months before mid-October 2025, Ruano packed up her home in Wisconsin, put it up for rent, and returned to her native El Salvador. She had fled gang violence there years earlier and survived forced labor on her journey north. For 14 years, she lived and worked in the United States while fighting a deportation order, according to The New York Times. Her hope for a stable future rested on a special visa for victims of human trafficking. But even as her petition for this visa—known as a T visa—remained pending, ICE refused to halt her removal.
Ruano’s case is now at the heart of a lawsuit filed in federal court in Los Angeles in the week before October 16, 2025. The lawsuit, brought by Ruano and several other plaintiffs, alleges that ICE is violating federal law by detaining and deporting victims of domestic violence and human trafficking who have applied for legal protection. According to Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, the government is “turning its back — arresting, punishing and deporting those individuals — and what we’re going to be left with is an even more traumatized, less open membership in our community, and it’s going to make us all less safe.”
The legal challenge comes amid a sweeping shift in federal immigration policy. For decades, Congress has sought to create and expand pathways to legal status for immigrant survivors of violence and trafficking, beginning with the Violence Against Women Act in 1994. These laws were designed to prevent abusers from using the threat of deportation to control victims. Victims could request delays in deportation while their applications for relief were pending, and those who cooperated with law enforcement could apply for visas that offered work authorization and, eventually, citizenship. Under previous administrations, ICE agents were instructed to protect these victims, generally refraining from civil enforcement actions against those seeking legal relief as crime victims.
But early in 2025, these policies were rescinded. An ICE memorandum instructed agents to comply with an executive order issued by President Trump on his second-term inauguration day, which called for “total and efficient enforcement” of immigration laws, as reported by The New York Times. This change has given ICE “more flexibility to proceed with removal proceedings, whether that is for a crime or a prior order of removal,” said Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint even calls for eliminating U and T visas, which provide protection for victims of domestic violence and human trafficking.
As a result, federal officers have increasingly placed victims in expedited removal processes, detaining them for long periods or deporting them before they have a chance to make their case in court. The lawsuit in Los Angeles is just one of at least five such legal challenges filed in recent months, targeting ICE practices in cities like Chicago, Portland, and Washington, D.C.
The plaintiffs in the Los Angeles case include a 46-year-old tamale vendor from Mexico, identified in court papers as Camila B., who had lived in Los Angeles for 23 years and applied for a U visa in 2023 after being assaulted and knocked unconscious. Another plaintiff, Kenia Jackeline Merlos, a 43-year-old native of Honduras, has been held at a federal detention center in Washington State since June 2025, after applying for a U visa in March 2024. Merlos and her four U.S.-citizen children were detained over the summer at a park near the Canadian border, where they were spending time with relatives, according to court documents. Other plaintiffs have reported enduring physical or sexual abuse by spouses, relatives, or others.
Prosecutors and victim services providers argue that U and T visas are essential for encouraging victims to cooperate with law enforcement in prosecuting traffickers and abusers. “It creates more dangerous situations, because the longer the abuse goes unreported, the more we find that it escalates,” said Erin Aiello, chief of the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Unit at the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts.
Ruano’s own journey is emblematic of the obstacles faced by immigrants seeking refuge in the United States. After being deported in 2011 without a chance to plead for asylum, she returned the same year, again fleeing violence. On her way north, she became a victim of labor trafficking. Once in the U.S., a judge granted her permission to remain and work while her asylum case was pending. She found work at a pizza factory in Milwaukee and later became a teacher’s aide. “I felt really useful,” she told The New York Times. But years later, with her asylum petition still unresolved, she was advised to withdraw it and apply for a T visa instead. That application was filed in February 2025, but her request to delay deportation was denied. Fearing separation from her 10-year-old twin daughters, she chose to self-deport in June 2025 with the girls, with her husband following a month later. “My hope now is that we can return,” she said.
Meanwhile, federal officials maintain that every unauthorized immigrant removed by ICE has “had due process and has a final order of removal — meaning they have no legal right to be in the country,” according to Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security.
For the Venezuelan woman in Chicago, the fear of being swept up in an ICE raid is ever-present. Unable to obtain a passport, she remains in hiding, unsure of when—or if—she will be able to reunite her family. For Ruano and others like her, the hope of returning to the United States remains alive, even as the path grows more uncertain.
As the legal battles continue and policy debates intensify, the fate of immigrant victims of violence hangs in the balance—caught between the promise of protection and the reality of enforcement.
