Immigration enforcement is turning an abuser’s deportation threat into leverage

ProPublica interviewed immigrant women held at Michigan’s North Lake Processing Center after encounters with police over domestic violence. In one chain of three women, each said she had been trying to leave an abusive relationship. Criminal charges were dropped or never filed in all three cases; ICE nevertheless detained one at a routine check-in and received the others from local authorities.

The pathway begins with a difficult policing problem. Domestic-violence scenes can involve competing accusations, and 24 states require an arrest when officers find probable cause. That can protect victims, but it can also criminalize them when officers misidentify the primary aggressor. Immigration enforcement then converts an arrest into a second, far more durable consequence—even when prosecutors decline to pursue a case.

The policy environment has removed some safeguards. The Trump administration rescinded limits on immigration arrests at sensitive locations such as shelters and hospitals and eliminated protections that had constrained action against applicants under the Violence Against Women Act and related crime-victim programs. Kent County’s jail transferred more people to ICE in the first half of 2026 than during the entire Biden administration, despite lacking a formal 287(g) partnership.

There is no comprehensive count of domestic-violence survivors detained or deported. ProPublica therefore does not claim national prevalence from the six alleged victims it interviewed at one facility. Its evidence is strongest on mechanism: police records, body-camera footage, dropped cases and detention histories show how a survivor can move from a 911 call to immigration custody without a criminal conviction.

DHS says the women entered the country illegally and will receive due process; the White House says ICE targets dangerous offenders. The two women described in detail had no criminal records. The public-safety cost extends beyond their individual cases: advocates say immigrants increasingly remain with abusive partners because calling police may expose them to detention. Deportation threats become more effective when the state demonstrates that an abuser can set that machinery in motion.