Migrants applying for a T or U visa usually go to a immigration lawyer, most of them won't even charge for the initial consultation. To our knowledge Alexi Ashe Meyers is not an immigration lawyer and never was. She was, however a prosecutor for the Brooklyn DA's office for many years. This means that her expertise is in stripping (largely poor, POC, migrant, black) people of their freedom. Imprisoning them in the only form of legal enslavement the US still allows - the prison industrial complex. Like the Human Trafficking Diversion Court that mostly charges people with low level charges like prostitution, and drugs, it would not be surprising if this is what most her record in Brooklyn was. The language they use suggests they support imprisoning people for these charges.
Here are the FBI numbers on Human Trafficking 1, 2 You'll notice that some of the people charged with human trafficking are "juveniles". Some prosecutors/police see teens in the sex trade as guilty of "trafficking themselves". They even charge underaged teens for trying to enter strip club etc. There is records of teens forced into "john schools" to learn that they are personally "enslaving people". T Visa keep in mind there's a cap on the T visa of 5,000 a year that is never reached, and it requires victims to work with the police to prosecute of someone, and get a note of approval from them as proof. This is the total number for the whole country. If you lose your case, or the police don't like you or don't think you're helping them fulfill their quota enough, you can be deported. It's life or death for most people in the process. We don't give migrants equal rights or protections, they have to go through a lot to get even deportation relief. Alexi seems to approve of making basic human rights conditional on migrant's wasting money on legal fees and years of trauma. These cases take years if you're lucky, and are often are never even investigated. To my knowledge (contact me if I'm wrong) she doesn't mention this, or advocate for eliminating the cap. She also suggests that with the partial criminalization model she supports, the police will just leave people in the sex trade alone. Which is a very blatant lie. |