READING — A coalition of immigrant advocates and legal aid orgs wants the City of Reading to compel the police department to create a framework and timeline to respond to requests for a critical piece of U visa paperwork.
Such visas protect undocumented victims of serious crimes who cooperate with law enforcement from deportation. An applicant must submit a five-page form, signed by law enforcement, prosecutors, or other qualified agencies, certifying they were a victim of a crime and helped or could help in a criminal investigation.
A certification does not guarantee that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will approve a U visa. However, the agency will not consider the applicant if the form is missing.
Lawyers who work with this population say the Reading Police Department stopped responding to requests for U visa certifications several years ago. That can deter attorneys from taking on these kinds of cases because they don’t want to waste a client’s time and money, or risk a person’s safety for a certification that may never come.
“Because of the lack of response and difficulty with the department, we had stopped even sending requests,” Jackie Kline, an immigration attorney with the legal aid group Aldea, told Spotlight PA in an email. Kline added that other attorneys in the area may share that expectation, and that it “may account for a low rate of requests even being sent to the department.”
During a brief conversation, Reading Police Chief Javier Ruiz told Spotlight PA that his department defers to the county district attorney’s office when it receives a request for a U visa certification. A spokesperson for Mayor Eddie Morán’s administration, which encompasses the department, declined to confirm Ruiz’s statement, saying only that it represented his views.
District Attorney John Adams said police are right to defer certification requests to his office.
“We just don't sign these at will. We sign them if the victim cooperates and continues to cooperate throughout the case,” Adams told Spotlight PA. “Sometimes the police might not know, and that's why we should be involved and the police should not.”
He added, “Something signed by the police, that doesn't mean that they continue to cooperate. So quite frankly, I think the police should just be forwarding this to us.”
But limiting U visa certification to the district attorney’s office excludes some victims, legal aid groups say. The office only acts in cases where someone has been arrested and charged. That doesn’t help victims whose perpetrators have fled or haven’t been apprehended, like a domestic violence survivor who called the police because her partner tried to kill her.
“She can't go to a district attorney because there's no case in a court because the perpetrator was never apprehended. So where does she go?” Bridget Cambria, executive director of Aldea, said of one such woman at a Reading City Council meeting in August.
Cambria is among those asking City Council to approve an ordinance that would direct Reading’s police department to institute a 90-day timeline for responding to U visa certifications, designate an officer to handle requests, and provide a written explanation when a request is denied.
Supporters say such a policy would build on Reading’s “Welcoming City” ordinance, which prohibits city employees and local police from assisting federal immigration enforcement. Advocates see the adoption of a certification policy as a natural step toward ensuring trust between police and the immigrant community in a city where roughly 25% of residents were born outside the U.S.
Sam Grimsley, immigration attorney with Community Justice Project in Reading, said he has noticed broad mistrust of police within the city’s immigrant community when it comes to reporting crime. He often hears it at walk-in appointments and monthly immigration clinics at the Safe Berks domestic violence emergency shelter.
“Basically every client I meet, even those who have talked to the police or not, they've always told me that they're scared. They're worried about the consequences. They're not sure of the benefit,” Grimsley told Spotlight PA. “I just think that's a gap that really could really easily be breached. It would be so easy for me to tell my clients, ‘Look, this will be quick and simple. Reading P.D., they have a certification process.’”
Finding the right approach
Reading Police Department has provided U visa certifications in the past, according to attorneys from Aldea, but Cambria said the agency has always lacked a policy.
Data from the city mayor’s office, provided to Aldea and shared at the Aug. 10 meeting, show Reading police provided three U visa certifications in “recent years,” a number Cambria described as “woefully low” for a community that has a significant immigrant population.
The Morán administration and Reading police declined to share data on the number of certification requests received over the past three years with Spotlight PA, as well as the number approved and denied.
The administration is still reviewing the initial version of the ordinance drafted by attorneys at Aldea. Reading Council Member Jaime Báez, who leads the push to adopt the measure, said he expects to introduce a finalized version of the ordinance sometime in October. Several City Council members responded positively to the certification proposal during an Aug. 10 meeting. Some raised questions about implementation, timelines and whether the policy should take the form of an ordinance or resolution.
The proposal, if adopted, would be known as the “Selena Zavala Ordinance,” in memory of a 20-year-old resident of Reading who was murdered by her abuser in a domestic violence attack. Her infant daughter was also shot and gravely wounded, but survived. Her parents, Erasmo and Maria, assisted with the investigation and have applied for U visas. Erasmo was detained by ICE but later released after a court battle.
City Managing Director Jack Gombach told Spotlight PA that Morán’s administration supports the key objective of the proposed certification policy: establishing a clear, consistent process for handling requests. At the same time, the administration wants any final policy to preserve the police department’s “evidentiary discretion” — the ability to weigh the facts of individual cases.
The draft ordinance, modeled on legislation Philadelphia City Council passed in June, would not allow Reading police to consider factors like elapsed time or whether a case ever reached prosecution.
Immigration attorneys advocating for the policy say they don’t object to discretion, but reject the idea that it should extend to an applicant’s criminal history, which they argue is the federal government’s determination to make, not the certifying agency’s.
Gombach also said that any such policy should not interfere with the county district attorney’s approach to certifying applications.
“We want to create a policy that fits our needs, fits our constraints, and do it in a way that complements the work being done in the DA's office,” Gombach said. “We don't want to create a competing structure or something that's not going to be supportive.”
Adams, the district attorney, said police should be involved only when a crime was reported but no suspect was identified or arrested, and only if they can substantiate that a crime happened — in order to prevent people from seeking U visa certification using false reports.
An earlier version of Philadelphia’s ordinance originally gave law enforcement 30 days to investigate and verify a U visa applicant’s claims. That was extended to 90 days after the city’s district attorney asked for more time to make sure the certification is “airtight,” said At-Large Council Member Nina Ahmad, who sponsored the legislation.
Law enforcement can also withdraw a certification if a person fails to provide information when requested or if there’s any suspected fraud, according to guidelines published by USCIS.
“There's incentives all the way through to keep cooperating," Grimsley said, "but it's not just like you get your certification, you're done.”