04/24/2024
Rachel M. Self, P.C. is pleased to report that the Martha’s Vineyard migrant victims have recently begun receiving Bona Fide Determinations in their U visa petitions from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. We are grateful that the migrants’ cooperation with the Bexar County Sheriff's Office has been recognized.
In September 2022, forty-nine vulnerable migrants were hunted, lied to, and tricked into getting onto transport vessels in a cruel, callous, and criminal political stunt. The Sheriff in Bexar County, Texas, Javier Salazar, and his extraordinary team in the Organized Crime Division, acted swiftly and immediately began investigating the crimes perpetrated in his jurisdiction. Though many of the migrants were traumatized and frightened of providing testimony and going up against powerful people, which in their country would risk deadly retaliation, they cooperated with law enforcement and gave their evidence. Based on what was learned from that cooperation, Sheriff Salazar certified that they had been victims of qualifying criminal activity for a U visa and U visa petitions were filed for the victims.
U visas ensure that crime victims have a path to legal status and, in some jurisdictions, protect those victims from removal while their visa petitions are pending. This is important because due to annual limits on the number of visas issued, U visas often take many years to adjudicate. The United States’ immigration system, which due to continued Congressional inaction has not been meaningfully reformed in over twenty years, remains severely backlogged. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services cannot relieve those backlogs when Congress refuses to pass legislation to effectuate meaningful change in a clearly broken system. The Bona Fide Determination allows those waiting in the backlog to obtain work authorization and protects them with deferred action until their visa becomes available.
Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida sent agents to the state of Texas to hunt vulnerable human beings as part of a political scheme. By offering false promises of work, housing, and education, those agents were successful in rounding up forty-nine people, including five children. Using private jets, at great expense to the Florida taxpayer, the migrants, who had already been victims of the violence, oppression, and corruption in their own countries, were victimized once again. Thankfully, our great nation recognizes that whether you are documented or undocumented, victims of crime deserve protection. No human being in America deserves to be abused, used, and abandoned.
The victims and the Bexar County Sheriff’s dedicated law enforcement officers have done their part to give District Attorney Joe Gonzales everything needed to hold the perpetrators of these crimes accountable. The District Attorney is now in possession of all the Sheriff’s copious evidence, including text messages from Florida authorities, contracts with vendors, forensic interviews, and accounts from the migrants themselves.
Despite Sheriff Salazar and his team conducting a thorough investigation across multiple states with more than fifty witnesses, and providing the findings and recommending prosecution to Bexar County District Attorney Gonzales over eight months ago, no action has been taken.
The Governor of Florida orchestrated the abduction of 49 human beings. The actions of all those involved in this scheme were criminal. The role of the DA is to prosecute criminal offenses, protect the innocent, and convict the guilty. The Bexar County DA’s inaction in this matter is concerning and cannot be understated.
In the United States, the rule of law still has a foothold. Agencies like United States Citizenship and Immigration Services have legal mechanisms to protect people who political operatives would like to use as pawns. They have the legal power to treat every individual fairly and according to the merits of their own case, free from political interference. We are grateful that such systems exist, and that the migrants can, at the end of the day, rely on our institutions of law and justice to deliver the freedom and fairness that did not exist in the country they fled.
These Bona Fide Determinations from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services come on the heels of the United States District Court District of Massachusetts’ recent ruling denying defendant’s motions to dismiss filed in the migrant’s civil case.
In its decision the Court recognized that “Vertol and other defendants here were not legitimately enforcing any immigration laws…unlike ICE agents legitimately enforcing the country’s immigration laws the Court sees no legitimate purpose for rounding up highly vulnerable individuals on false pretenses and publicly inserting them into a divisive national debate.” It further ruled that “[t]reating vulnerable individuals like Plaintiffs in this way, as alleged and accepted as true for purposes of the motion to dismiss . . . is nothing short of extreme, outrageous, uncivilized, intolerable, and stunning.” U.S. District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs.
Sheriff Javier Salazar and his team have done everything they can do. Their full investigation was provided to the DA over eight months ago, along with recommendations for criminal charges. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has done what it can do. It has begun issuing Bona Fide Determinations for the victims. Yet the Bexar County DA has not even convened a Grand Jury. The DA has a duty to hold the perpetrators accountable for their actions. In the absence of accountability, this cynical, heartless behavior will continue.
