Acting ICE Director Vitello Rescinds Decades of Guidance Protecting U/T-Visa and VAWA Crime Victims From Arrest

Acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello signed Policy 11005.4, “Interim Guidance on Civil Immigration Enforcement Actions Involving Current or Potential Beneficiaries of Victim-Based Immigration Benefits” — ten days after Trump’s second-term inauguration and eleven days after the Jan. 20, 2025 executive order “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” cited as its authority. The memo is a primary document, obtained directly from ICE’s own FOIA reading room (ice.gov/doclib/foia/policy/11005.4.pdf), not a leak or secondary characterization.

What it rescinded, by name: ICE Directive 11005.3, “Using a Victim-Centered Approach with Noncitizen Crime Victims” (Dec. 2, 2021, Biden-era), and ICE Policy Statement 10076.1, “Prosecutorial Discretion: Certain Victims, Witnesses, and Plaintiffs” (June 17, 2011, Obama-era) — a policy line running back roughly fifteen years, not merely “the prior administration’s” guidance. Those directives had required officers, absent exceptional circumstances, to refrain from civil immigration enforcement against known beneficiaries or applicants for victim-based immigration benefits (U visa, T visa, VAWA self-petitions), to affirmatively look for evidence a person was a crime victim before acting, and to coordinate with USCIS to expedite victim-based applications.

What 11005.4 substitutes: enforcement against current beneficiaries and pending applicants/petitioners is now permitted “at the discretion of Field Office Directors and Special Agents in Charge,” in consultation with the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, “where the totality of circumstances warrant.” The categorical protection is gone; what remains is a discretionary carve-out administered by the same officers empowered to arrest.

The structural claim, precisely stated: the U visa exists as a law-enforcement-cooperation instrument — Congress created it via the 2000 VAWA reauthorization “out of recognition that victims without legal status may otherwise be reluctant to help in the investigation or prosecution of criminal activity” (DHS’s own stated rationale). Rescinding the arrest-protection guidance does not touch the visa’s statutory eligibility criteria; it removes the operational assurance that made the statute functional as an incentive. A crime victim who cooperates with police still qualifies for a U visa on paper. Whether cooperating is now safe is a discretionary judgment call made by the same agency doing the arresting.

This memo is the instrument later confirmed as central to litigation: on 2026-05-20, Judge Andre Birotte Jr. (C.D. Cal.) preliminarily enjoined enforcement under it and certified three nationwide plaintiff classes in Immigration Center for Women and Children v. Noem (2:25-cv-09848) — see 2026-05-20–icwc-v-noem-preliminary-injunction-u-visa-arrest-protections. It is also the policy under which at least 75 documented U-visa holders were arrested during Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota between the operation’s launch and mid-March 2026 — see 2026-08-07–ice-arrests-75-uvisa-crime-victims-operation-metro-surge.

Note on dating: this memo is dated January 31, 2025 — the first year of the second Trump term, not January 2026 as an earlier capture-story lead framed it. “Ten days after Trump assumed the presidency for the second time” (Jan. 20, 2025 inauguration) is the Minnesota Reformer’s own phrasing and matches the memo’s internal citation of the Jan. 20, 2025 executive order. The arrests it enabled continued into and through the January 2026 Operation Metro Surge launch and beyond — the memo predates the operation by roughly a year.