Dan Levine and Kristina Cooke :
(From previous issue)
Reyes walked across the border from Mexico with a group of about 30 people when he was 16. Following the attack, Reyes spoke to the police multiple times, giving them a description, as best he could, of the man who stabbed him. The man was never caught, which meant Reyes isn’t eligible for a cooperation signature from the DA’s office. And McShan retired before Reyes applied.
APD did not respond to specific questions about Reyes’s case. Recently, the only work Reyes has been able to get is in construction. His doctor told him that to avoid complicating his injury, he should try not to do any heavy lifting. On the construction site, he wears a supportive belt. If he got a U visa, he said, he would look for work that doesn’t require constantly lifting heavy things. “My neighbor works at Wal-Mart and says that they pay well.”
Responding to concerns that some local agencies weren’t certifying crime victims, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy proposed a change to the law in 2011: If a crime victim seeking verification from local police is stonewalled, he or she could then submit evidence directly to Citizenship and Immigration Services.
That language drew opposition from other senators, including the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Charles Grassley. Leahy dropped the provision.
“It would have undermined the entire program,” Grassley said at a 2012 hearing. His spokeswoman recently told Reuters that the committee had not been presented with any evidence that law enforcement was not properly certifying U visa applicants.
The Oakland Police Department developed its U visa procedures in 2008, and faulty requests to verify cooperation have been rare: Between 2009 and 2013, the department rejected just 57, said Lieutenant Kevin Wiley, supervisor of the special victims section. Wiley recently turned away an applicant who was in prison for participating in the very crime of which he claimed to be a victim.
Wiley said he believes crime reporting has gone up in immigrant neighborhoods because of the U visa. “We’d rather give an applicant the benefit of the doubt at this level,” he said.
Oakland verifies more undocumented crime victims than any city besides Los Angeles, though it has little more than a tenth of the population of Los Angeles. Both the Oakland Police Department and the Alameda County district attorney’s office have coordinators who work with undocumented crime victims.
“They’re our ambassadors” for law enforcement in immigrant communities, said Kim Hunter, an Alameda County senior deputy district attorney.
The system worked for Zurisadai Cortez. A few weeks after he graduated from high school in 2007, he was hanging out with buddies in San Leandro, adjacent to Oakland, about to head for a pickup soccer game. A couple of guys walked up to them, made small talk, and walked a few paces. Then one of them opened fire on Cortez and his friends.
“I heard the ‘ch ch,’ and [saw] him just turn around, and we all just hit the ground,” Cortez said. No one was hurt, and the police came right away. “They seemed to believe we were good kids right off the bat,” he said. Later that night, he accompanied the cops to identify a suspect. Cortez testified for the government in court, and the shooter was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Afterward, Cortez heard about the U visa from a family member whose husband had been shot. An Alameda County prosecutor certified Cortez’s cooperation form, and Citizenship and Immigration Services approved his application. Cortez, who walked across the desert with his family as a child to enter the US, graduated from college last year.
“It’s just crazy how that piece of plastic gives you a sigh of relief, just such empowerment,” he said.
Allegations of police dragging their feet on certifications have arisen in New York, with one of the largest populations of undocumented people in the United States.
Huang’s attorney filed a lawsuit against the city on behalf of Huang and six other immigrants, alleging that the NYPD abused its discretion under New York law because it wouldn’t allow anyone to verify cooperation besides the commissioner.
That has created “massive logjams” and “leaves many crime victims with no alternative for obtaining certification,” according to the lawsuit filed earlier this year in New York state court.
NYPD Deputy Commissioner Herman said two additional police officials can now verify undocumented immigrants who cooperate with law enforcement. “That has sped up the application process, and that’s a good thing,” Herman said, adding that most crime victims shouldn’t be waiting more than two months. The lawsuit is pending.
Huang, meanwhile, said through an interpreter that the lack of certification is an obstacle to realizing her dream of opening a restaurant with her husband. Now living in Fairbanks, Alaska, all she can do is wait for the required signature.
“I’m living an afraid life,” she said.
Another New York crime victim, Omar Merabet, entered the country illegally on a ship from Algeria in 1994. Three years ago, he was badly beaten while out delivering Little Debbie snacks on Rockaway Boulevard in Queens.
A driver in another car scraped his parked van and blamed him for the collision. He broke nine bones in Merabet’s face, which is now held together by a metal plate. “In the wintertime, honestly the left side is like, dead,” he said. “It’s like numb.”
Merabet cooperated with police at the scene and returned to the station to look at books of mug shots. He never heard of any arrests in the case. The detective working on the case attested to Merabet’s cooperation, he said, but since that officer is not authorized by the NYPD to sign the certification form, Merabet needs a higher-up to do so. He is not part of Huang’s lawsuit.
Another sticking point is that Merabet’s assault is classified as a misdemeanor on the police report. NYPD officers often misclassify felony assaults as misdemeanors, said Merabet’s lawyer, Disha Chandiramani.
NYPD’s Herman said the department would still verify those cooperators if they provide medical records and other evidence demonstrating that the crime was actually more serious than a misdemeanor.
Merabet is currently under supervised release, fighting a deportation order issued after he lost a bid for political asylum. He hopes the NYPD will verify his cooperation so he has a chance to stay in the country.
-Reuters
(Concluded)
