VAWA Confidentiality and Criminal Cases: How Prosecutors Should Respond to Discovery Attempts for Protected Information [pdf]

This tool for prosecutors discusses best practices for prosecutors in responding to discovery requests from criminal defendants requesting information contained in the victim’s immigration case. The case could be a U visa, a VAWA self-petition or a T visa case and the discovery obligations turn on federal statutory VAWA confidentiality requirements and what is in the prosecutors possession. Generally only in U visas is the certification discoverable and not the full U visa case file. In other cases where there has been no certification, no part of the victim’s immigration case file would be discoverable.