Local Law Enforcement Should Put Domestic Violence Victims Ahead of Immigration Agenda

Click to expand Image Plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers detain an immigrant leaving their scheduled court appearance at a Federal immigration court in New York City, June 4, 2025. © 2025 Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images Human Rights Watch, the Alliance of Immigrant Survivors, Americans for Immigrant Justice, and other partners, submitted a statement of record to Congress on July 10 as the Trump administration continues to use state and local police via the 287(g) agreements that allow these agencies to participate in federal immigration enforcement. The statement emphasizes that survivors of domestic violence and trafficking need to be able to trust local authorities and comes in the wake of Congress’s June authorization of over US$31 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and to support 287(g) agreements with more than 2,000 local law enforcement agencies nationwide. While the administration claims to be targeting “the worst of the worst,” since President Donald Trump took office to this March, 66 percent of those who have been arrested have no conviction and 38 percent have neither a conviction nor a pending charge. Human Rights Watch and the Alliance of Immigrant Survivors have gathered accounts of police arresting immigrant women in domestic violence situations, then transferring them to ICE custody. We’ve also heard from two lawyers about cases where they say police also arrested women in “prostitution” stings and then passed these women over to ICE who then detained them. The women’s lawyers allege it was clear that they were victims of human trafficking. Local law enforcement’s cooperation with ICE increases fears of detention, deportation, and family separation, harming community safety by negatively impacting community trust, especially for immigrant survivors of domestic violence. As survivors become too scared to report crime, abusers are empowered—risking community safety for all. To that end, our statement warns when we “shut immigrant survivors out of protection systems, we lose critical opportunities to identify and intervene with harm doers early, before patterns of abuse deepen and more people are hurt or worse.” As law enforcement ramps up efforts to meet the administration’s aggressive deportation goals, it is essential for community safety that authorities prioritize protecting survivors regardless of their immigration status. Congress should make sure that the increased funding it has provided to ICE does not further undermine immigrant survivors, women’s rights, and community safety across the country.