Antonio Flores, for example, has been an officer at the San Francisco Police Department for nearly four decades. He was resistant to the idea of certifying U visa applications when he first attended a mandated training with Orloff’s team in early 2000s, an NIWAP report shows. But then he saw their utility firsthand. According to the report, an undocumented young woman had fallen in love with a violent gang member who raped her, gave her drugs, and trafficked her. Fearing deportation, the woman was reluctant to come forward to the police. What finally got the case rolling was the encouragement from her mother, who previously received a U visa certification from local law enforcement based on a domestic violence case. The mother told her daughter to trust the police, and the daughter’s decision to share her story proved to be crucial to the investigation. With her help, the report said, Flores’ department was able to arrest the criminal and uproot a sex trafficking operation involving minors. Suspicious of the visa category at first, Flores eventually came around and said that such a policy that combines police work and victims’ services could lead to a win for everyone.

Despite the visa’s proven benefits to law enforcement—the NIWAP found that immigrants who have received a certification and filed a U visa application are 73 percent more likely to participate in the criminal case and 50 percent more likely to file police reports if they experience future crimes—many agencies still decline to offer assistance. A 2018 report by the NIWAP shows that only 35 percent of law enforcement agencies, 68 percent of prosecutors’ offices, and 18 percent of courts said they sign U visa certifications. According to another survey by the project, the reasons officers often cite for not signing the form include that the criminal was not prosecuted, the crime happened too long ago, or the victim did not suffer enough injuries. A number of certifiers also expressed that they would refuse to provide a signature simply because the federal law gives them the authority to deny any request as they see fit. Unless a state law exists to provide more rigorous regulations, certifiers are under no obligation to cooperate with petitioners.

Austin Kocher, a faculty fellow at Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, carried out his own survey, interviewing sheriffs, police officers, and prosecutors about their opinions on U visas. He concluded that some officers are resistant to the process because of their anti-immigrant sentiments. “I would hear them say ‘I’m not racist, but I’m not going to help you stay in the country because you came illegally,’ ” Kocher said. “A lot of people who are in law enforcement just assume that immigrants are always lying and always trying to take advantage of the system.”

Even states that have passed legislation specifically intended to mitigate this kind of anti-immigrant attitude have had issues enforcing those laws. An analysis of documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests for this report shows that out of 16 Illinois agencies––police departments, sheriff’s offices, and prosecutors’ offices––that serve sizable immigrant populations, at least nine of them appeared to have violated the state law by either failing to provide timely responses to U Visa certification requests or imposing arbitrary internal policies to deny signatures to immigrants who have helped law enforcement.

The Mount Prospect Police Department, for example, rejected seven out of 10 requests that it received in 2019 and 2020 because it has an internal policy to only assist petitioners who are “currently needed to facilitate the prosecution of an active criminal case,” according to records from FOIA requests. Among the immigrant victims who bore the consequences of Mount Prospect’s capricious rule are a woman who suffered a miscarriage due to domestic violence, a woman who was raped in her sleep and had to receive treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, and the mother of a minor child who was sexually abused. In the last case, the Mount Prospect police refused to sign a second certification request even after the petitioner’s attorney pointed out that its reason for denial was contrary to the law. The department did not return calls for comment.

“We’ve had this issue for years,” said Rocio Becerril, a Chicago-based immigration attorney whose client could not get a signature from Mount Prospect police. “It’s very, very arbitrary. When this happens, I just wait for these people to retire and get a new chief of police to maybe try again in the future.”

Becerril has also been trying to attain a certification from the Oak Park Police Department for another client who is also a survivor of domestic abuse. She has not gotten a response since she first submitted the request in August 2019. According to Becerril, the police repeatedly told her “I’ll get to it if I get to it.” Becerril has felt stuck as to whether she should send the department a confrontational email about the 90-day limit under the VOICES Act. Even with the law on her side, upsetting the police will likely only make her client’s process more difficult. Shatonya Johnson, the deputy chief of the Oak Park Police Department, responded to my request for comment on these cases: She told me that it should not take this long for someone to hear back before noting that the department was going through a transitional period and processing requests more slowly than usual.

Other Illinois agencies also have policies that are contrary to the VOICES Act, records show. The Naperville Police Department denied 15 out of 19 requests and follows a written policy that largely disqualifies crimes that happened more than five years ago, even though the guidance says that there should be no time limit. The Elgin Police Department had the same protocol, resulting in 17 unjustified denials in the past two years, although it amended its policy in November to follow the law. In Boone County, State’s Attorney Tricia Smith said she would not provide certification if the case in question is still pending. The DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office would not sign the form if the case is closed.

“That’s a Catch 22––you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t,” said immigration attorney Richard Gellersted. “If it was currently pending, they would deny it because he hasn’t fully cooperated, yet when the case concludes and he’s no longer needed, then they deny it for that.”