When trafficking victims are found and law enforcement (such as the police or ICE) becomes involved, they are not just sent back to their home countries. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, reauthorized in 2003, created legal immigration relief in the form of the T visa and something called "continued presence" status. Both allow the victims to stay in the U.S. legally while allowing them to work and access social services, such as medical care, housing and food stamps.
Being granted a T visa or continued presence, however, is not an easy thing. To be approved for continued presence or the T visa, a victim must be willing to assist in the investigation and prosecution of those who trafficked them. Law enforcement must authorize the application, and without awareness of the crime by the agencies, or without the involvement of the agencies, many victims go without relief. ICE received only 160 requests for continued presence last year, and out of 229 applications for the T visa, the Department of Homeland Security approved only 112, according to an Attorney General's report published last month.
Tampa Bay's leading trafficking lawyer, Kathlyn Mackovjak, calls law enforcement the "gatekeeper" to immigration relief because, she said, "You can't get a T visa without them."
Mackovjak is particularly alarmed at the ignorance of state and local ICE agents regarding the T visa. "The thing about ICE is their agenda is to deport and remove people from the United States," she said. "They do not know about immigration relief. That's not in general what they are trained to do. They are trained to deport people. I have come across agents that don't know what a T visa is.
"There's no doubt they're intimately involved in this. Yet as the arm of our justice system who are responsible for removing people, it disturbs me that their agents don't know what a T visa is when they're in contact with immigrants every day."
This article appears in Jul 12-18, 2006.
