This article is the thirteenth in CPJ’s Ink & Impact series featuring young writers from across the country. In today’s political climate, often marked by cynicism and despair, CPJ’s annual Ink & Impact conference helps Christian young people become messengers of hope. In a world dominated by digital distractions, Ink & Impact develops writers who can articulate complex political topics in an approachable, nuanced way to inform the public. The views and opinions reflected in these articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of CPJ.
Content note: This article discusses domestic violence, family homelessness, and immigration-related fears.
Names and identifying details of this story have been changed to ensure anonymity.
Biology exams were not the only tests Marina Sanchez was slated to take during her university’s finals week. It had been 11 years since Marina left Colombia at age nine, and soon she would enter the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) field office in New York City to complete her citizenship test.
While coming to the U.S. allowed for a new environment, new schools, and the possibility of new life, much of Marina’s teen years were spent unhoused due to an abusive home environment. After a violent outburst from Marina’s stepfather, she and her sisters would hurriedly flee from their home with their mother, seeking shelter in motels, a room from a friend, or a sympathetic acquaintance. As her stepfather’s violence continued, Marina faced homelessness on her own for two years.
The mixed immigration status of Marina’s family made seeking help extraordinarily risky. While their stepfather was a lawful permanent resident, their mother was entirely undocumented. Marina and her older sister had green cards, while their half-sister—their stepfather’s daughter—was an American citizen by birth. For the Sanchez family and other immigrant or mixed-status families suffering from domestic violence (DV), fear of exposing the undocumented status of some family members, or triggering a visa revocation for others, can create conditions that make it harder for survivors to safely seek help.
These policies, and the Sanchezes’ story, exist within a broader political context. Just hours into his second term, President Trump expanded the legal framework for immigration enforcement and began making good on his campaign promise of deporting 1 million people each year. As of January 2026, the federal government was holding a record high of 73,000 people in immigration detention facilities. Amid intensified immigration enforcement efforts, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have detained and removed noncitizens despite their family ties in the United States, including parents of children with citizenship status. These actions have raised concerns about family separation and the extent to which immigration enforcement accounts for family circumstances.
Yet it doesn’t have to be this way. The Sanchez family deserved both gentleness and decisive intervention. Together, civil society, churches, and government can work toward a new narrative for immigrant and mixed-status families—one where enacting justice and addressing violence can also include compassion and the chance for transformation.
The Family in God’s Created Order
Beginnings are important. In the beginning, God aligned the axis of our turning world and called the light into existence. The stars were beckoned forth; seas and land wrapped the earth. In this jubilant opening act, God also called families into the created order.
In Genesis 1:28 God spoke to humanity and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Depending on your church tradition, you may know this exhortation as the “cultural mandate.” This mandate carries a meaning deeper than a literal command to populate the earth and develop the world’s resources. There is a commission for families to fill the world with the fruits of their stewardship; their contributions of culture, creative work, and daily habits have profound potential. Structures and institutions that serve families and communities can be born from humanity’s God-given creativity. However, the order of that service is important—structures serve families, not the other way around. These institutions should respect the family as a foundational authority within God’s created order.
Yet this picture of flourishing is not the world we inhabit. At the beginning of human history, brokenness crept in and most social and political structures no longer prioritized the sanctity of the family. Families are displaced by war, violence, and economic failure. Within the family, the Fall is felt through devastating injustices such as domestic violence, conflict, and abandonment. As the Center for Public Justice’s (CPJ) guidelines on the family remind us, the family is a “community of covenant love and trust,” and protecting that covenant sometimes requires intervening. Although interventions that change family dynamics should never occur without serious consideration, when that foundational covenant of love and trust is broken, intervention is required for the safety of the individual family members. While there is no simple solution, government, the church, and civil society can each play a role in addressing domestic violence in mixed-status families.
Immigration Policy and Domestic Violence
How government structures immigration enforcement has direct consequences for whether survivors of domestic violence can safely seek help. Congress enacted the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 1994 as a comprehensive response to domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. Among its provisions, VAWA established a self-petition process allowing noncitizen survivors to pursue immigration status, without depending on the abusive family member to sponsor them. In practice, however, this process is complicated. Approval largely depends on the petitioner’s ability to document and prove their abuse, which can create barriers for many survivors.
This difficulty is compounded by new policy guidance from former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, which places even greater responsibility on the person experiencing abuse to prove their situation, such as proving that they were residing with the abuser during the qualifying relationship. These added barriers make an already difficult process even harder for survivors to navigate.
In Marina’s case, although her mother could have applied for a green card through VAWA, undocumented individuals often weigh the risk of remaining without legal status against disclosing personal information to immigration officials. Regardless of an application’s outcome, fear of immigration enforcement can contribute to the fear of detention felt by people without formal status. Federal protections like VAWA are designed to give survivors a path toward safety but the fear of the immigration system remains a powerful barrier. Because many immigrants fear that contact with law enforcement or government agencies could lead to immigration consequences or family separation, they face an excruciating choice and these stakes can create an undue incentive to stay with a violent partner. Even with her husband’s abuse, the risk of his deportation was enough to keep her from seeking help. The Sanchez family also relied on Marina’s stepfather for income, and he was the biological father of the youngest Sanchez daughter. So, while they sheltered with a church member or in a motel, they inevitably returned to him.
One argument for deporting noncitizens who inflict violence against their partner or family holds that by breaking the law they have surrendered their rights to certain protections. However, does this justify a response categorically different from what a fully naturalized family would experience under the same circumstances? The justice system has procedures in place to pursue accountability and safety for citizens in abusive relationships, though that very system fails to protect survivors far too often. For mixed-status families, the additional fears and uncertainties place even these protections nearly out of reach. Scripture reminds us that God draws no distinction between the native and the foreigner: “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:33-34). Even in the name of justice, immigration enforcement should not create barriers that prevent survivors from safely seeking the help they need.
Toward a Just and Compassionate Policy
These principles can inform an immigration policy that upholds the family unit while protecting the survivors of DV and addressing its root causes. A public justice framework can help ordinary Christians and policymakers work toward policies that uphold the inherent dignity of the individual and the sanctity of the family. According to CPJ, “The family is the most basic of human institutions. Government should recognize and protect the family as an essential expression of its responsibility to uphold a just society.” CPJ’s guidelines on government further hold that this responsibility extends to “the safety, welfare, and public order of everyone within its jurisdiction,” including the most vulnerable members of mixed-status families. With this framework in mind, government can take meaningful steps to ensure the sanctity of the family is upheld while also protecting those most vulnerable within it. Congress should strengthen VAWA’s statutory protections to ensure that administrative policy updates cannot narrow eligibility in ways that conflict with the law’s original goal of providing safe harbor for survivors of abuse regardless of immigration status. By preserving accessible pathways to protection, government can work toward ensuring that survivors and their families are not left without recourse.
Throughout the United States, states, counties, and cities have established various “sanctuary policies” to build trust between immigrant victims of crime, including survivors of domestic abuse, and law enforcement. These policies, such as bilingual public service announcements and immigration-related training for public servants in the criminal justice system, can ease the anxiety immigrant communities feel when they need to access law enforcement. For families like Marina’s, the fears are multilayered. Marina’s mother feared her deportation as an undocumented person, while also fearing that reporting her husband’s abuse could trigger his visa revocation, removing the family’s primary income and the father of the youngest daughter. Training public defenders and prosecutors about the immigration consequences of certain convictions could help ensure that families navigating these fears receive adequate legal guidance. Protecting immigrants from immigration-related fears as they navigate the justice system is a first step toward building trust and keeping families safe.
Yet, government reform alone cannot sufficiently address the complexities immigrant and mixed-status families face when a partner becomes abusive. When Marina reflected on her family’s needs, she expressed a longing for more resources within the church. This could be as simple as churches advertising community resources for undocumented and mixed-status families. But Christians can have a more direct role as well. Marina expressed that accessing a counselor within the Christian community could have encouraged her mother to seek resources that would establish a more lasting safety for their family. Christian counselors, social workers, and legal advocates can work with the criminal justice system to provide more domestic violence intervention and prevention programs. Faithful communities can work alongside government to enact justice and offer survivors of DV a chance for healing and true flourishing.
Immigration reform and faith-based services cannot undo the violence and trauma Marina and her family experienced at the hands of her stepfather. However, these alternatives can provide a lifeline for families like Marina’s and give them the room they need to navigate what justice and healing looks like in a way that honors their dignity and agency. Current immigration policies compound the complexity and fear families experience in abusive situations, risking revictimization. Yet, justice and compassionate policies can coexist. With Christ as our model, we can offer up our imaginations for God’s good work—the work that says no individual, no family, and no system is too broken before the purifying light of God.
Sanna Wilber is a former intern at the Center for Public Justice and received a bachelor’s degree in Political Science with a minor in Global Studies from Binghamton University in May 2026. She is passionate about immigrant and refugee advocacy and hopes to pursue a career in public health policy and law.
Graphic by Center for Public Justice
