t is either a material witness, bystander, a victim, or an indirect victim of certain qualifying crimes and is cooperating with law enforcement.

 What you see in that incredible increase is the fear of those people to not be deported for something as simple as picking up the phone and dialing 9-1-1 or coming and having the courage to say that someone is victimized,  Teare told ENOUGH Reporter Kelly Wiley.

Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare (KPRC 2 Photo/Roger Franco) (KPRC 2)

Certification from law enforcement is only one step, and the U visa process is historically slow. Federal law only allows 10,000 U visas to be approved each fiscal year nationwide.

Crime victims who are not U.S. citizens wait years for legal authorization to remain in the country, and some say those delays and shifting federal policy makes criminal cases harder to investigate and prosecute.

Board certified immigration attorney Javier Rivera said he learned in February 2026 that his client was approved for a U visa she applied for nearly a decade earlier.

Rivera provided records showing a central Texas sheriff's office confirmed to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in 2017 that the woman was robbed at gun point, beaten and sexually assaulted in her own home seven years earlier.

The suspect in her case, according to the records KPRC reviewed, was never found or identified.

In 2021, Four years into her wait for a U visa, President Joe Biden directed federal immigration agents not to detain or deport people who had pending application under the Violence Against Women Act, or VAWA, T visas - for victims of human trafficking, and for U visas.

In 2025, 8 years into waiting for her U visa to be approved, President Donald Trump rescinded that policy. The Trump administration said the previous directive was rescinded to comply with President Trump's policy  to achieve the total and efficient enforcement of immigration laws.  Under the new directive, ICE agents were instructed to  coordinate with local and state law enforcement, as appropriate 

 It created this very complicated situation for a lot of these people who are waiting in line for these applications, and they are now being picked up and some of them are actually being removed,  Rivera said.

 These individuals are applying for protection because they are victims of crime and they are helpful to law enforcement. If ICE is now choosing to enforce removal - and they are assisting in local law enforcement in the investigation of a crime they may be out of the United States before their assistance is needed. 

The policy change nearly impacted a high-profile case involving the murder of an 11-year-old girl in Pasadena, TX. The Harris County District Attorney's Office said it certified the girl's father for a U visa in Feb. 2024, because he was the one to discover her body in their home.

But not even a year later, in 2025, the district attorney's office said they learned he was on a plane about to be removed from the country. The immigration enforcement happened after he was arrested on a DUI charge, according to a crime advocate representing the family.

 He is the only one that can authenticate a number of pieces of evidence. He is the one that found her body. He is the only one that can give her a voice to a jury eventually,  Teare said.

In 2025, the California non-profit Immigration Center for Women and Children filed a class action lawsuit against the federal government to reinstate the Biden-era policy that protected undocumented victims of crime from immigration enforcement actions if they had pending applications for U visas and other immigration benefits extended to victims of human trafficking and domestic violence.

In May 2026, U.S. District Judge André Birotte Jr. issued a temporary order requiring the federal government to reinstate the 2021 policy.

 We are still seeing places where people with T's and U's and VAWA's are still being detained, being removed and then we are seeing other places where people with T's, U's and VAWA's pending that are being outright released - so it's been an uneven response from the federal government,  Rivera said.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, that oversees visa applications, and ICE have not responded to allegations of uneven response since the court order temporarily reinstating the Biden-era policy. But USCIS spokesperson Zach Kahler said the agency is concerned about fraud and abuse within the victim-focused visa programs.

 Filings for T and U visas and VAWA exploded under the Biden administration due to rampant fraud, abuse, and exploitation,  Kahler said.  When aliens clog up the process with fraudulent claims, they harm real victims with legitimate claims. We are prioritizing rooting out fraud in these programs to help women and other survivors of abuse. 

In one case out of Louisiana, five people - including multiple former police chiefs and a U visa grantee, pled guilty to participating in a conspiracy to commit visa fraud. The U.S. Attorney's Office said over a decade, the group conspired to produce false police reports so that the purported victims could apply for U visas.

Data from the Harris County District Attorney's Office shows, when the office experienced the 33 percent jump in U visa certification requests, the office certified less than half of those applications. In the last six years, the most U visa applications the DA's office certified in a single year was in 2024. That year, the office certified 880 applications with some bleeding over from the previous years backlog.

Teare said his office was able to process more applications in 2024 because of a grant that allowed them to have a larger team screen the applications. The district attorney's office provided a copy of its certification review protocol that shows nearly a dozen factors the office is supposed to screen for - including if the case was filed with their office, whether the case has already closed and the criminal history of the applicant.

 We go through a process that is laid out statutorily. We take the time to make sure the people applying are victims, or are material witnesses, or indirect victims. We make sure the crime that they are talking about is one of the enumerated crimes where U visa is appropriate,  Teare said.

Teare spoke about the case of Juan Francisco Monroy Turuy -- an undocumented man who called 911 to report a shooting in a Bellaire Home Depot parking lot in August. While at the scene of the shooting, and after providing a statement to the police, Monroy Turuy was detained by federal immigration officials.

 That is a case that doesn't qualify, and is not one that we would certify because we can make the case without him, and they are not a victim of a crime,  Teare said.  What that case highlights is: why in the world would the next person call the police?