Excerpt from The Sacramento Bee

Lately, I’ve been hearing more and more stories from shelters, advocates and victims about a new form of fear that’s taking hold — not just fear of an abuser, but fear of deportation. For many immigrant women, leaving an abusive partner now means risking not just their safety, but being torn away from their children and the only home they’ve ever known.

According to shelter staff quoted in a recent CBS News investigation, threats to “call ICE” are now one of the fastest-growing weapons abusers use to keep their victims silent.

Abusers know how to weaponize immigration status — withholding documents, threatening deportation and using fear as another form of coercive control. And what’s even more disturbing is that, sometimes, the system helps them do it. When immigration agents show up at domestic violence shelters, it sends a chilling message: The system is not on the side of survivors. It tells victims that we don’t care about their safety; we care more about papers than lives.

The fear hits before they ever walk through the door. They’ve seen what happens during a raid: people are vanishing, families are torn apart and children are left behind. When that fear keeps victims from walking through the doors of these safe spaces, we’ve already failed them.

That’s why I authored Senate Bill 841, the Keep Safe Spaces Safe Act. The bill makes it clear that immigration agents can’t enter private areas inside domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, human trafficking support centers or homeless shelters unless they have a judicial warrant.

SB 841 doesn’t ban enforcement. It doesn’t rewrite federal policy. It simply says that if you want to enter a place where someone is trying to feel safe for the first time in years, bring a warrant.

Read the full article at: https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article311190715.html