
Anson Stevens-Bollen
A year-old partnership between the Santa Fe Police Department and the Solace Crisis Treatment Center, the Southside resource that provides services and counseling for survivors of domestic and sexual violence, is helping get the word out about a special program for undocumented people who help police. But its future is uncertain under the Trump administration.
The police department has been funneling money to the treatment center for several years to provide services for survivors, and since last year, it's also footing the bill for Solace workers who give police legal advice for how to fill out immigrants' applications for special visas. A pending contract to renew the spending is up for a City Council vote early July.
The visa program concerns U visas, which are issued to immigrants victimized by crimes and "who assist government officials in investigating or prosecuting criminal activity." Applications require that top officials from the Santa Fe Police Department certify a crime was committed and that the applicant assisted the police investigation in some way. Once issued, the visa has historically shielded a person and their immediate family from deportation.
Interim Police Chief Andrew Padilla reviews all applications for the visas, but SFPD doesn't widely advertise the program and there is no information about U visas on the department's website, according to Lt. Sean Strahon, an acting department spokesman. Instead, potential applicants will often hear about it from a lawyer or other advocate in town, says Sheila Lewis, an attorney and legal adviser for the U visa program at the Solace center.
The idea behind the U visa program, says Lewis, is that "if we make it safe for people to come forward and report crime," undocumented people will have an incentive to work with police. She counsels Padilla and other police officials on how to handle U visa applications.
In the last year, SFPD has certified information for 29 U visa applications and denied four. Lewis estimates the department has reached out to her on five separate occasions for guidance on how to review the applications.
"I can give advice [to Padilla] on how to read the regulations, what he can do in a situation,—[but] ultimately [the police department is] the client, and I'm legal support," Lewis says. "I try to advise the chief that his role is limited."
In a memo from May referencing the contract for Solace, Padilla wrote to the City Council Finance Committee that the Solace center could bring "comfort and security to the victims and [help] with the quickly needed assistance that perhaps a Police Department cannot nor should not provide to victims."
The reasons services for domestic violence and sexual abuse survivors were transferred to Solace employees from SFPD had to do with privacy, says Solace Executive Director Maria Jose Rodriguez Cadiz.
In the mid-2000s, there was an entire wing at the center inhabited by police, who acted as intake for survivors. But officers treated the counseling process like criminal investigations, and deeply personal confessions could later become discoverable in criminal cases. Transferring the service from police to Solace social workers helped resolve this conflict.
Now when a survivor comes to the center, says Rodriguez Cadiz, "they don't have to worry that when they open their heart and minds and speak about what's happened to them, that the details will be known by everybody."
The functions covered by the city contract with Solace can sometimes overlap, such as when an applicant for a U visa is also the victim of domestic violence or abuse. Police are still part of the equation, which may be a deterrent for immigrant women looking for help, according to research.
In a study from 2015, the ACLU found a whopping 88 percent of people they surveyed, including workers and attorneys who support victims of domestic violence, thought police were inclined to disbelieve victims of sexual and domestic abuse and assault.
This concern was heightened for poor and non-white women. Sixty-one percent of respondents also reported that contacting police sometimes or often leads to criminal charges that initiate immigration or deportation proceedings for family members. Rodriguez Cadiz tells SFR she sees the Solace center as a bridge between SFPD and immigrant women who may be wary of police.
Another broader issue is that the efficacy of the U visa program seems to be waning under the Trump administration, which is aggressively prosecuting immigrants who lack the federal government's permission to be in the country as they wait for approval of the visas. More people who qualify for the visa are being deported than ever before, and it no longer guarantees the protection it once did.
This is what the New Mexico Faith Coalition for Immigrant Justice feared before New Mexico resident Exlander Galindo Duarte went for his check-in with an ICE official on Monday in Albuquerque. Duarte, who has two US-citizen children, has been waiting for his U visa application to be formally approved for almost 10 years. His wife was deported to Mexico in May despite the traditional practice of U visa applicants' family members also being protected from deportation.
Duarte wasn't detained Monday, but one of his attorneys, Roxie De Santiago from the Rebecca Kitson law firm in Albuquerque, says more and more she is seeing federal prosecutors "moving to terminate and issue orders of removal for individuals whose U visas are pending."
Sheila Lewis of the Solace center says federal policy is the wildcard in the U visa process.
"That's out of our hands," Lewis tells SFR. "We never want to suggest to someone they take action [because] sometimes we don't know what the law is or how it'll be administered."