A coalition of legal organizations and undocumented immigrants has filed suit in Los Angeles challenging an ICE policy that authorizes the "routine" jailing and deportation of noncitizen survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking, according to court papers obtained Wednesday.
The suit filed Tuesday by the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law and others contends the policy "violates the very legal protections, crafted by Congress and passed with bipartisan support, that were designed to shield vulnerable adults and children from harm."
Sergio Perez, with the Center for Human Right,s said the lawsuit is on behalf of eight men and women.
“This administration, this federal administration in the service of a xenophobic and racist deportation campaign has chosen to violate the law and target immigrant survivors of serious crimes and violence, and renege on their end of the deal,” he said. “Instead of protecting these brave individuals, they are arrested [and] inprisoned, torn out of the communities and lives they've built here.”
The plaintiffs also allege in Los Angeles federal court that ICE "routinely imprisons and deports immigrant survivors who have been formally granted the right to remain in the U.S." and "regularly deports survivors of trafficking and other serious crimes without carrying out the required legal review to determine if they are eligible for protections that Congress specifically created to keep survivors safe from deportation."
A message requesting comment sent to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was not immediately answered on Wednesday.
According to the lawsuit, the government's practices are harming "vulnerable survivors," including Yessenia Ruano, who says she came to the United States from El Salvador seeking safety from human trafficking in 2011 and worked as a teacher's aid in Milwaukee until June 2025, when she says she was forced by ICE to self-deport.
In compliance with the law, Ruano said she applied for a T Visa, which protects survivors of crimes related to human trafficking, in February while working in Wisconsin, and her attorney requested a stay. ICE denied the stay in March and informed her attorney that if she did not "promptly" return to El Salvador, she would be detained at a forthcoming June check-in with ICE, according to the lawsuit.
Ruano returned to her home country with her U.S. citizen children.
"At the first check-in, the agents told me I would be deported," Ruano said, according to a news release from the plaintiffs in the suit. "They said that if I didn't go on my own, they would hunt me down and find me, and that I would be separated from my daughters, detained, and deported. I was in turmoil, because I also could not face being taken away from my kids and imprisoned."
Erika Cervantes with the Center for Human Rights said one of their clients, a 64-year-old woman, was forced to sleep on the cold floor despite telling ICE she had arthritis.
“Despite her applying for a U visa, despite her going through the trauma of being a domestic violence survivor, and despite having the protections associated with that visa, she was deported to Mexico the very next day,” she said. “That's the reality. That's what's happening on the ground and under this administration. That's not gonna change course, and that's why we're joining brave immigrant survivors and filing suit. Immigrant survivors, including our clients have been through enough. Enough is enough. “
To address the fear that frequently prevents immigrant survivors from seeking help due to the threat of deportation, Congress created the U and T visa programs in 2000 through its renewal of the Violence Against Women Act and the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act.
Those protections were designed to offer a pathway to permanent status, according to legal organizations focusing on immigration. The lawsuit's plaintiffs allege the administration of President Donald Trump "is actively denying and unlawfully dismantling these vital protections, all in the service of illegal enforcement actions that ignore the law."
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