TCRP VAWA: Serving more than 1,000 Victims of Domestic Abuse in FY 2009
February 14, 2010 by Staff1
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| The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Program is comprised of six staff members — four out of Austin and two out of El Paso — who help immigrant survivors of domestic violence apply for immigration status in this country. In addition to the OAG program, we offer VAWA services from our San Juan and El Paso offices. Our program provides direct victim services, submits applications and petitions to immigration, and conducts a statewide public awareness and community education campaign.
We submit the following Immigration applications for immigrant survivors of domestic abuse: (1) I-360 VAWA Self-Petitions for immigrants married to U.S. Citizens are Legal Permanent Residents; (2) I-918 U-Visa applications for immigrant victims of crime who have cooperated with law enforcement; (3) I-751 Application to Remove Conditions; (4) employment authorization applications; and (5) I-485 applications for our clients to adjust to legal permanent resident status. Our community education program focuses on making sure shelter advocates and law enforcement agencies across the state are familiar with the remedies available to immigrant survivors of domestic violence. The public awareness campaign, by contrast, seeks to educate the community of their rights and the services that may be available to them. To that end, we participate in educational fairs, we place public service announcements in print media, and we air public service announcements on the radio and television in English and other languages (primarily Spanish, some Korean). Volunteer involvement is an integral part of our program, and it is required by our grantors. In the fiscal year of 2009 (September 2008 through August 2009), our program worked with approximately 32 volunteers throughout the year, most of whom were providing direct services to clients. |
OAG VAWA PROGRAM FISCAL YEAR 2009 Total New Victims Served: 1137 Type of Victimization: Direct Victim Services Victim Services Training Victim Assistance Community Education Victim Assistance Public Awareness Campaign Hard Media PSAs placed Electronic Media PSAs aired Written Materials Distributed Applications Submitted Declaration Hours: 506.6 |
TCRP Creates Counseling & Support Services Program for VAWA Clients
October 14, 2009 by Staff1
(Top) VAWA Interns Erica Schmidt, Valerie Medina, Rebecca Fortson Anderson, (Seated) Intern Rebecca Gonzales and Support Services Coordinator Laura Gomez-Horton
The VAWA Social Services Program at TCRP offers counseling, case-management, and support services to clients in the Immigrant Survivors of Domestic Violence Program (VAWA). Services are offered to alleviate challenges individuals and families face in their efforts to escape and heal from the abuse and trauma they have experienced in their lives.
Since its inception, the program has served adults and children referred through the El Paso, Midland/Odessa, Austin, and San Juan offices. The social services program aims to empower clients by providing assistance with safety planning, advocacy, education, self-development, and basic needs. In particular, clients have been able to connect to counseling and support services, a much needed relief for people living in isolation or areas without services.
Sonia Martinez, UTEP intern
for the Social Work Program
at Paso del Norte Civil Rights Project
In addition, collaborations have been formed with local colleges and universities that have supplied the program with social work and counseling interns. The TCRP offices now have bachelor and master level interns from UT Austin, St. Edwards University in Austin, UT Pan American, and UT El Paso.
Civil rights worker helps liberate abused immigrants
July 21, 2009 by Staff1
By MARCIA DAVIS-SEALE
Tribune Staff Writer
Lindsay Morris, a circuit rider with the Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP), worked in Mount Pleasant last week on what she describes as a critical immigration issue in this state, and in this area.
“Most people don’t’ realize that issues involving immigration affect every person living in the state-citizen or not,” she said.
Morris’ clients are mostly women, illegal immigrants living in the United States, caught in the crosshairs of citizenship and deportation, their citizenship prospects and total well being held hostage, in the hands of an abusive spouse, boyfriend, family member, or employer.
Most of these women don’t speak or understand English, and they come to this country frightened, vulnerable and totally dependent on their abusers.
TRIBUNE photo by Marcia Davis-Seale. At the S.A.F.E.-T fundraising and community awareness event Saturday, Lindsay Morris, with the Texas Civil Rights Project, center, met one of the first cases she ever worked from Mount Pleasant. The lady asked not to be identified by name. A tearful Nancy Morelos, center right, watch the joyful reunion.
Morris sees battered spouses and women trapped in human trafficking and prostitution rings. She says she’s usually got some 30 or more cases open, working 30, with 20 or more pending.
Mount Pleasant’s Shelter Agencies for Families in East Texas (S.A.F.E.-T.) represents just one of the many agencies that refer candidates to Morris.
In July, Morris said she would learn if the grant, through the Texas Attorney General’s office, that funds her work will be renewed, or if the women she helps will be left to their own means.
In Mount Pleasant last week, she met with some local law enforcement officials and legal professionals to educate them on the needs of (mostly) women, who are not United States citizens, and are living with an abusive spouse or boyfriend and the services her civil rights project helps provide them.
On Saturday, Morris stationed herself at the S.A.F.E.-T. re-sale store to encourage donations, promote awareness, and reach out to those in the community who can be helped through the Violence Against Women (VAWA) immigration rights division she heads up for the East Texas TCRP region.
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) passed by the U.S. Congress in 1994, includes provisions for immigrant relief and benefits for immigrant survivors of domestic violence. VAWA gives battered immigrants freedom to self petition for citizenship, rather than depend on others to petition for them.
It’s not a free ticket anyone can use if they decide to claim abuse, Morris said. Under VAWA, the candidates for deferred deportation and citizenship are carefully screened, Morris said, and their abuse must be documented and proven.
At the S.A.F.E.-T shop on Saturday, Morris met the face of one of the very first cases she ever worked. The lady, who Morris had never met in person, happened to be driving by with her four children en tow, and saw the signs, written in Spanish, posted on the shop’s storage facility offering to answer questions about citizenship and services.
Most would take for granted that last statement about driving by, but for women who have moved here from another country and do not have citizenship, a driver’s license is an almost-unachievable passport to independence and opportunity most never obtain.
This Hispanic woman, Morris’ first case from S.A.F.E.-T., exquisitely beautiful and disarmingly direct, answered questions from the Tribune Saturday, facilitated by Morris’ bi-lingual translations.
The woman did ask that her name not be used.
She said, as a young woman, she came to America from Mexico in 1996, with her husband, so he could find work to support them. She said that just before the couple crossed into the country, the husband’s actions toward his wife had become abusive, jealous, accusatory.
She was pregnant, but he insisted the baby she was pregnant with was not his, she said, and he tried to force her to abort the pregnancy.
In America, while he worked, she stayed home with the children.
The first time he hit her, she didn’t report it, because he said it wouldn’t happen again, and she didn’t report the next time or the next time or the next time.
He had begun the application for her to become a legal citizen in 2001, but used her lack of citizenship and that application as leverage to control, take advantage and further abuse her.
She remembers when she was pregnant, she said, that one day he grabbed her by the throat and threw her down on the bed…. She didn’t finish describing what else he did to her that day.
“He would leave the children alone in the house, and he would force feed them and me.”
She stayed in the S.A.F.E.-T shelter numerous times. And even when she went back “home”-SAFE-T would extend their services, helping her get basic necessities for her children.
“He was always threatening to report me to CPS,” she said. “I was always so afraid I would get deported and separated from my kids. They were born in the U.S. and they would stay here, but I could have been sent back to Mexico and never allowed to return or see my kids again.”
“I was desperate-at the point of committing suicide. I had no job, no money, we had no food, no clothes, and they were about to turn off our electricity.”
Finally, her husband was put in jail, she said, because he wouldn’t take care of the children.
She said he wouldn’t grant her a divorce from jail, and she had no way to legally work, earn money, or receive child support to take care of her children.
He did finally tell her if she gave him two of the children, then he would finish the immigration application process for her citizenship.
She didn’t.
One of her S.A.F.E.-T caseworkers gave her a brochure on VAWA, and gave her Lindsay Morris’ telephone number. That’s when things began to turn around for her and her children, she said.
Today, in her late 30s, she has gained a new lease on life. She carries with her at all times her deferred action certificate from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The certificate is her “ticket” to remain in the United States without fearing deportation. She has tucked copies of the document away so she won’t have to worry about losing it or someone stealing her only copy.
Periodically, she must apply to get the certificate renewed.
Today, she waits for the final steps of her citizenship process to play out.
To other women, who are in the difficult situation she was in, she offers this advice: “Don’t let a spouse humiliate you. Go forward in life for your kids.”
Her gratefulness to those from S.A.F.E.-T and to Morris, and the hope these agencies helped this courageous woman find didn’t need anyone’s translation on Saturday.
Help For Immigrants Dealing With Domestic Violence
February 15, 2009 by admin
Reported by: Karen Hopkins
Domestic violence is a problem throughout the Ark-La-Tex, especially for immigrants. With the language barrier and fears of deportation, many are afraid to go to police. But there is a group showing volunteers in Texarkana how to reach out to immigrant victims.
It’s a message of help, that volunteers want all to understand. “No es necessario vivir con violencia,” says Issac Harrington, a lawyer with the Texas Civil Rights Project. Translation — It’s not necessary to live with violence.
The language barrier silences many immigrant victims. “They don’t have the ability to tell their story to tell what’s happening,” says Lindsay Morris, who works with the Texas Civil Rights Project. She says immigrant victims are afraid of deportation and often unaware of their rights. “They don’t know the laws of the United States. They have the right to call police and use the court system.” Morris taught volunteers how to help immigrants in Texarkana. “We have a small percentage of our clientele, approximately two to five percent who are either Hispanic, Asian, Russian, all over,” says Connie Sloan, Director of the Domestic Violence Prevention Center.
Immigrants struggling with domestic violence can come to the center, walk up to the desk and get a counselor who can give them legal options.
“If they don’t have an advocate or counselor, some support system helping them along, they are not going to make it. They’ll get confused or lost in paper work,” says Harrington. It’s paper work that could lead to citizenship or a visa. He says giving immigrants independence, gives them freedom from their abusers. “They can at least break away without any fear of deportation without having to rely on their abusive spouse.”
The Domestic Violence Center in Texarkana serves both sides of the state line.
DPS sued over tighter rule for immigrant drivers
January 19, 2009 by admin
By CLAY ROBISON
Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
AUSTIN — Civil rights advocates sued the Texas Department of Public Safety today, contending that new driver’s license requirements for immigrants discriminate against people legally in the United States.
The suit, filed in state district court in Austin by the Texas Civil Rights Project, seeks to force the DPS to stop enforcing the rules, which went into effect Oct. 1.
Jim Harrington, the group’s director, called the rules “an unconscionable burden on immigrant survivors of domestic abuse and discriminatory against the Hispanic community.”
He said the policy also “creates a danger to the public safety because it forces people to drive without insurance…..It is ill-conceived, unconscionable and counterproductive.”
VAWA advocate Glenaan O’Neil speaks about DPS rule
Supporters of the new policy, including Gov. Rick Perry, have said the more stringent document checks required of immigrants have made the state safer. They have said the new rules were designed to keep illegal immigrants from getting licenses and to fight fraud and identity theft.
The suit was filed on behalf of three women, all legally working in the United States, who have been denied or likely will be denied license renewals because the DPS doesn’t accept their work authorization status.
The new rules require non-citizens to show official work authorization proof in the form of an official employment authorization document (EAD) every six months to renew their licenses.
Harrington said the federal government is slow in processing many EADs and the DPS won’t renew or issue a license without them, even if the immigrants have other work documentation.
Two of the plaintiffs are S-C, a Mexican national who lives in Austin, and J-A-T, a Mexican national living in Mt. Pleasant. Victims of domestic abuse, they are in this country legally under the federal Violence Against Woman Act, Harrington said.
The third plaintiff, identified only as “Jane Doe,” is a political refugee from Honduras living in Houston.
Demandan al Departamento de Seguridad Pública por restricciones para obtener licencias de conducir
Por CLAY ROBISON
Houston Chronicle
AUSTIN — Defensores de los derechos civiles demandaron el miércoles al Departamento de Seguridad Pública de Texas porque, según ellos, los nuevos requerimientos para que inmigrantes puedan obtener una licencia de conducir discriminan a personas que están legalmente en el país.
La demanda, presentada en el tribunal estatal de distrito en Austin por el Proyecto de Derechos Civiles de Texas, intenta obligar al Departamento de Seguridad Pública (DPS, por sus siglas en inglés) a que deje de exigir los nuevos requerimientos, que entraron en vigor el 1 de octubre.
Jim Harrington, director del grupo, calificó las medidas de “una carga inaceptable para los inmigrantes que han sobrevivido a la violencia doméstica y discriminatoria contra la comunidad hispana”.
Harrington agregó que dichas regulaciones también “crean un peligro para la seguridad pública, porque obliga a otras personas a manejar sin seguro. Está mal concebida, es inaceptable y contraproducente”.
Los partidarios de estas regulaciones, incluido el gobernador Rick Perry, han dicho que la revisión más estricta de documentos de inmigrantes han contribuido a que el estado tenga mayor seguridad.
Asimismo, dijeron que las nuevas medidas fueron creadas para impedir que los inmigrantes indocumentados obtuvieran licencias de conducir y para luchar contra el fraude y el robo de identidad.
La demanda se presentó a favor de tres mujeres que trabajan legalmente en Estados Unidos, pero se les negó o es probable que se les niegue la renovación de la licencia porque el DPS no acepta su estado en el país.
Las nuevas medidas exigen que quienes no son ciudadanos estadounidenses presenten cada seis meses prueba de que están autorizados a trabajar en Estados Unidos, mediante un documento oficial para tal efecto, para poder renovar sus licencias de conducir.
Harrington dijo que el gobierno federal ha procesado con lentitud muchas autorizaciones de empleo y sin ellas, el DPS no les renovará la licencia de conducir, incluso si portan otro tipo de documentación laboral.
Dos de las demandantes son S-C, oriunda de México y residente en Austin, y J-A-T, también mexicana y residente de Mt. Pleasant.
Víctimas de abuso doméstico, están legalmente en este país debido a la ley contra la violencia a mujeres, según Harrington.
La tercera demandante, sólo identificada como Jane Doe, es una refugiada política de Honduras que vive en Houston.
Civil rights group sues DPS over license requirements
AUSTIN (AP) – Civil rights advocates are suing the Texas Department of Public Safety to block new driver’s license requirements for immigrants. The advocates filed the lawsuit in a state district court in Austin Wednesday, contending the new rules discriminate against people legally in the United States.
The lawsuit aims to force DPS to stop enforcing the rules, which took effect Oct. 1. The new rules require noncitizens to show official work authorization proof in the form of an official employment authorization document every six months to renew their licenses. However, supporters of the new policy, including Gov. Rick Perry , said the rules are intended to keep illegal immigrants from getting licenses and fight fraud and identity theft.
The suit was filed on behalf of three women legally working in the United States. The group said the three have been denied or likely will be denied license renewals because the DPS does not accept their work authorization status.
Lawsuit challenges new driver’s license rules for noncitizens
By Juan Castillo
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
An Austin woman and two others claim in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Travis County that new Department of Public Safety driver’s license requirements for noncitizens discriminate against them, even though they are legally in the United States.
The women, who are represented by the Texas Civil Rights Project, are identified in the District Court lawsuit as S-C, a Mexican national who resides in Austin; J-A-T, a Mexican national from Mount Pleasant in East Texas; and “Jane Doe,” a political refugee from Honduras living in Houston.
S-C and J-A-T are domestic violence victims and have a legal right to be here while their petitions for legal status are pending under the federal Violence Against Women Act, said James Harrington, the project’s director who is representing the plaintiffs.
All three women had driver’s licenses but were denied renewal or likely will be denied because they are not citizens and the DPS does not accept their federal work authorization status, Harrington said. The rules, which went into effect Oct. 1, are intended to prevent undocumented immigrants from obtaining driver’s licenses. At the same time, the DPS created a new kind of license for noncitizens that is valid until a driver’s legal status to be here expires.
The lawsuit seeks to force the DPS to stop enforcing the rules, which Harrington called “an unconscionable burden on immigrant survivors of domestic abuse and discriminatory against the Hispanic community.”
A spokeswoman for the governor’s office said the office had no comment on the lawsuit. “The governor for some time has been in support of those (license rule) changes to ensure public safety and national security and to enhance the integrity of the driver’s licenses,” said the spokeswoman, Katherine Cesinger.
The rules require people who are not U.S. citizens to prove they are in the country legally before getting an original, renewal or duplicate driver’s license or identification card. Harrington said noncitizens and nonlegal permanent residents — known commonly as green card holders — must show official work authorization, called an Employment Authorization Document, for a period that exceeds six months, or else they will not be able to get a license.
In addition, they must renew their licenses every six months, at a cost of $24 each time, Harrington said, adding that temporary workers who are legally in the country have to pay more than $200 more for licenses than a typical driver who renews a license once every six years.
Harrington explained that because of backlogs, it often takes the federal government months to provide the official work authorization document showing it has extended permission for the immigrant to work here.
Harrington said Jane Doe was denied a license even though she provided a letter from the federal government extending her work status. He said Doe, a single mother, depends on her car to work in minimum-wage jobs and has had a Texas driver’s license and auto insurance for 18 years. She continues to drive, Harrington said.
“What we ought to be doing in reality is facilitating people having driver’s licenses because that means they’ll have insurance, and that protects the public at large,” Harrington said.
Group files suit against DPS license restrictions
State lawmakers and civil rights advocates are pushing to change a recent Texas law some say is unfair to immigrants.
The Texas Civil Rights Project filed suit Wednesday morning in state district court in downtown Austin against the Texas Department of Public Safety. They want the state to block the new driver’s license requirements for legal immigrants. Advocates say the new rules discriminate against people legally in the United States.
The group is representing three women, including one from Austin who will now lose their license because they are not citizens.
New rules which took effect last October, require legal but non-citizens to show official work authorization proof every six months to renew their license. The fee would cost $26 dollars each time.
Supporters of the new policy, including Texas Gov. Rick Perry, say the rules are intended to keep Illegal immigrants from getting licenses and to fight fraud and identity theft.
A bill to block this new change is expected to be discussed at this year’s legislative session.
Advocates expect a hearing next week on whether to grant a temporary injunction.
