U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Canadian-born Tania Warner and her 7-year-old daughter in March of this year even though Warner’s green card was pending.
When she asked the officials detaining her for a phone call, an agent snickered.
“He said, ‘You don’t get a phone call. You’ve been watching too many movies,’” Warner said, recounting the traffic stop that led to her detention at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center south of San Antonio.
Warner and her daughter spent 19 days in ICE custody despite obtaining a formal extension to be in the country legally while her documents are being processed. Now, two months later, she remains in San Antonio wearing an ankle monitor, her green card application in limbo.
Further complicating her situation is the Trump administration’s May 22 memorandum on green card applications.
The memo states that green card applicants — immigrants seeking permanent residence and work status — must go through consular processing, applying at a consulate office outside the U.S., regardless of whether they already live in the U.S. Filing within the country should be reserved for extraordinary cases, the memorandum says.
While Warner believes her protected status should remain despite the memo, she’s uncertain of what happens next.
“I’m in uncharted, uncertain waters right now, and they just leave you that way, just to wonder,” Warner said.
Warner isn’t alone. Tens of thousands of green card applicants were sent scrambling by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) memorandum on consular processing.
San Antonio’s USCIS office has the 13th highest number of pending green card applications in the nation, according to an analysis by Manifest Law. With a backlog of 8,105 family-based applications, the White House move complicates an already drawn-out process for local residents.
Alamo City-area immigration attorneys said they’re also trying to make sense of the memo. Attorney Vanessa Alonso isn’t telling clients to panic, but she said her office is certainly not treating the memo as business as usual.
The memo presents itself as a reminder that applications are reviewed on a case-by-case basis. However, Alonso said that’s not how things are actually playing out. Rather, the White House communication is putting new pressure on asylum officers to scrutinize applications in ways they never have before.
“Officers may now look more heavily at discretionary factors in the person’s case and could deny adjustment of status even where the person otherwise qualifies,” Alonso said.
Javier Hidalgo, public affairs director at immigration justice nonprofit RAICES, had a similar takeaway. The memo is less about a change in position than it is an effort to push asylum officers to fall in line with the administration’s interests in greatly curtailing migration.
“If you want to communicate a directive to your asylum officers without explicitly saying it, that’s basically what they’ve done,” Hidalgo said. “They’re signaling how they want asylum officers or the immigration judges to exercise their discretion rather than actually doing that in an independent way.”
Both Alonso and Hidalgo said clients are already noticing an impact.
With its inconsistent information and discretionary nature, the White House memo adds new confusion to an already complex immigration system, advocates argue. Alonso said the new uncertainty is the whole point.
“The message immigrants receive is: even if you follow the rules, the process may change, become more discretionary, or become more uncertain,” she said. “That kind of chaos has a chilling effect. It discourages people from applying, from traveling, from trusting the system and sometimes even from seeking legal relief they may be entitled to.”
And green card applicants aren’t the only ones seeing the effect.
The memo contributes to a growing perception of arbitrariness and distrust of the immigration system as a whole, undermining its very integrity as an institution, Hidalgo maintains. Placed in the context of ICE enforcement actions across the country, the announcement fits into a broader pattern of sowing fear and chaos.
“You couple all that together, it’s really creating this atmosphere of fear, of pushing folks into the shadows, discouraging them from trying,” Hidalgo said. “If you imagine someone that’s seeking safety, now essentially what the government is communicating is that it might be worse for you, you might be harmed more if you try and access these protections.”
Attorneys have already filed legal challenges to the memo. While it’s possible the courts ultimately may reject the administration’s changes, Hidalgo said great damage has already been done to the nation’s immigration system.
In the meantime, Hidalgo said RAICES is advising clients to gather all evidence showing why their case should be considered an exception to consular processing. Regardless of the uncertainty surrounding the memo, he said applications remain on a case-by-case basis, and applicants should be ready to provide a factual basis for why they need to apply from within the U.S.
Warner, the former ICE detainee, said she’s still in the dark about the future of her green card application. Though she’s wearing an ankle monitor, her case seems to have disappeared from the immigration court system, along with her hearing date.
She now awaits a June 23 check-in with ICE, hoping agents will provide more information about her status. Always in the back of her mind, though, is the fear that she may be detained again and estranged from her child.
“We have a life here. My daughter has autism … she’s finally in a place where she’s getting the support she needs, and that rug just feels like it’s going to get ripped out,” Warner said. “I’m in a very dark place right now.”
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