Her abusive husband had hurt her too many times.

So Carmen F., an immigrant from South America, called the police. He was soon deported.

Then she applied for a U visa, a special visa that gives crime victims a pathway to permanent residency in the United States if they cooperated with law enforcement to get their perpetrators off the streets.

Unfortunately, the wait time to receive one of these visas is often more than 15 years. There’s a massive backlog, and in the meantime the Trump administration has been deporting the applicants, contrary to longstanding Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has defended the deportations, arguing that crime victims can return later if their visas are eventually approved.

Last year, ICE detained Carmen (not her real name) and deported her and her young son back to their homeland—where her abusive ex was awaiting them at the airport.

Now she’s part of a class-action lawsuit by the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law. The suit seeks to return Carmen and other deported survivors to the United States. It also seeks an injunction to stop ICE from deporting others in similar circumstances. The case was filed in federal court in California in October on behalf of eight named plaintiffs and four immigrant rights groups. A judge is expected to issue a decision any day.

U visas were born out of a problem: Undocumented immigrants are exceedingly vulnerable to violent crimes, and they are less likely than citizens to come forward and help police catch the perpetrator, because doing so puts them at risk for deportation.

In 2000, as part of the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, Congress created the U visa pathway to permanent residency for them. Immigrants who survived domestic violence, sexual assault, and certain other crimes could apply for the visa if they helped law enforcement investigate or prosecute the offense. Survivors of trafficking could apply for something similar, T visas.

“Seeing my child so afraid, I knew I had to protect him and had no choice but to call the police.”

But Congress capped the number of U visas that could be granted each year at 10,000, not nearly enough to cover all those who apply. Today, more than a quarter-million immigrants are in the backlog. In the past, they were allowed to stay in the United States until US........

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