Immigrant Crime Reporting and the U Visa Program: A Case Study in the Southeastern United States

• In Event: Immigration and Justice Issues I

Abstract

While research has traditionally examined the role of law enforcement agencies in policing immigrants as potential perpetrators of crime and its relationship to federal immigration law enforcement, researchers have focused less on how police respond to immigrant victims of crime and help them secure legal benefits. This paper examines a local case of the U visa program that is administered by the Department of Homeland Security. Eligible unauthorized immigrant crime victims can apply for a U visa and potentially gain citizenship if they report and assist in the investigation of the qualifying crime. A key feature of the U visa program is the mandatory involvement of a certifying agency, most commonly law enforcement. Using a variety of census tract-level measures, crime reporting rates in a mid-sized city in the Southeastern United States, administrative data on U visa certification requests to the police department and their outcomes, and qualitative interviews from officers in the jurisdiction, we provide one of the first examinations of the U visa certification rate for qualifying crimes at the census tract level. This study is amongst the first to deeply investigate the outcomes of a police-centered intervention intended to encourage immigrant crime reporting.

Authors

• Lilly Yu, RTI International

• Christopher Scott Inkpen, RTI International

• Wayne Pitts, RTI International