Five years after dozens of El Paso-area immigrants cooperated with law enforcement in the aftermath of the 2019 racially motivated shooting at a Walmart, the relief they applied for from the federal government could still be years out of reach.
At least 50 witnesses and relatives applied for a U visa after authorities began their investigation into the attack. The specialty permit was created in 2000 “to strengthen the ability of law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute cases” relating to several major crimes, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services explains on its website.
But five years after the attack, the applicants are still waiting for news about their visas. In fact, these immigrants may be waiting several more years — or perhaps decades — for their documents.
Immigration attorneys say that’s due, in part, to a lack of resources provided to the USCIS to address the growing backlog of applications. The U visa also comes with an annual 10,000 cap on the number of visas that can be issued.
Allegra Love represents the 50 people left in limbo.
“People in immigrant populations were not participating in the prosecution of actual criminals,” Love, the supervising attorney for community programs at El Paso-based Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, told The Texas Newsroom. “There were so many more people than Congress predicted who were able and willing to participate in this program as the actual victims of crime.”
For an immigrant to be eligible for the visa, law enforcement officials must certify the applicant has provided information that aids the investigation, and the immigrant must agree to be available to investigators as the case continues.
That’s all been done, Love said.
For people like Ana, a witness to the shooting, the wait adds another hurdle to the several she’s faced in the past five years.
“While I have tried to heal from this horrific attack against people like me and my children, the trauma may remain for the rest of our lives,” she said in a statement to Las Americas. “I urge community leaders and elected officials to help families like mine gain peace and stability.”
A federal case against the gunman, a North Texas man who drove to El Paso to commit the killings, ended last summer when he was sentenced to 90 consecutive life sentences. He was convicted of killing 23 people and injuring 22 more in his attack, which intentionally targeted the Latino community in the border city.
A separate state case, where prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, continues and is expected to go to trial next year.
The U visa is valid for four years and after three, the recipient can apply for lawful permanent residence, better known as a green card. After five years of permanent residency, a green card holder can apply for citizenship.
Love and her clients want to know when they’ll receive the visa and start that process.
Some of her clients have since been granted deferred action, a temporary status that allows them to work and provides some relief from deportation.
“What the government has started to do is process the cases. And they're sending letters to our clients saying ‘You're going to qualify for this, but we just actually don't have the visa to give you,’” she said.
In 2020, the average time to process the application was about four years, and there was a backlog of about 140,000 cases, KERA reported at the time.
But the USCIS specifies the timeframe “does not reflect the current processing times from initial receipt to the final issuance” of the U visa. It adds that not all cases are the same, and that some cases take longer than the average.
As of Wednesday, the processing time had increased to 58 months, just under five years, and there were more than 220,000 cases pending, according to USCIS statistics.
The funding USCIS receives from the federal government has remained relatively consistent over the last two fiscal years. And the resources the agency does have are used to process other applications, said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an attorney at the Migration Policy Institute.
“There are legitimate questions about how USCIS and [the Department of Homeland Security] overall prioritize the use of their resources that they do have,” she said.
Bush-Joseph added: “For instance, the focus on work permits for newcomers and processing humanitarian parole applications — those two areas have really been a focus for USCIS. And they have a limited number of adjudicators to work on other types of applications like these.”
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