“If I seek help, they might deport me, but If I don’t, he might kill me.” This harsh reality is what many undocumented women must face in the United States, hiding from immigration officials and abusive partners. They are eventually forced to chose the lesser of two evils, if they’re brave, and live long enough.
According to migration and gender scholar Amarela Varela, “Domestic violence is one of the main motivations for women fleeing Central America.” And yet, once they reach the U.S., thanks to Donald Trump’s issued executive order prioritizing deportation, asking for police help became much more dangerous.
Months after the order, at least in Los Angeles, reports of sexual assault dropped 25% among Latinos, and domestic violence reports decreased by 10% while they remained steady in other ethnic groups. Maria – who asked that pseudonym get used – left Mexico after her pleas for help got ignored by authorities.
In 2015, she took the radical decision of coming to the United States to hide with her mother, her sister, and her two children. Life in the U.S. brought a mixture of relief and exhaustion, working two jobs to maintain herself and her family, but nobody around knew her, so she was sure nobody was going to find her.
That feeling wouldn’t last long. One morning Maria returned to the house she was renting after dropping off her son at school, and as she tried to open the door, she felt a tug on the other side.
She had been dating a man recently, and for a moment, she thought he had come over to surprise her. But the father of her children was the one behind the door.
He threw her on the floor, beat her, pulled her by the hair towards the bedroom, and proceeded to abuse her sexually. “I felt so stupid,” she said, amidst tears. “I was just so frozen. I couldn’t do anything.”
He took money from her purse and then left, leaving her locked inside the house, shocked and broken. Then she picked herself up to get her son from school.
“To this day, I don’t know how he found us,” she said. The risk of going to the police seemed too high, and although she would have been a perfect candidate for a U visa, created in 2000 to give undocumented victims of crime the right to hold legal residency and work, Maria did not know of it.
She decided to move, but her ex-partner showed up again, this time when her boyfriend was home. They ran, but he found her yet again, and this time she was alone – he beat her and took her money, laughing at her when she threatened to call the police.
“He told me I was stupid and that I was going to get deported,” Maria said. If she didn’t ask for help she’d be killed, and she wanted to survive, but asking for help was choosing deportation.
She met a Latino justice organization and got referred to Casa de Esperanza, where she met Adriana Tizcareno-Zamudio. Zamudio promised to help her get a protective order and accompanied her to file a complaint with a police officer who promised to help if it was ever needed.
She’s currently the holder of a protective order, attending group therapy and looking to get some for her children and mother as well. She’s still hiding but feels safer. If he is to come after her and her family again, it could be him who will finally get deported from the United States.
This article was inspired by THE GUARDIAN // ‘If I seek help, the police might deport me. If I don’t he might kill me’