READING — Erasmo Zavala hoped the legal system could protect his daughter from domestic violence. He encouraged her to seek help from law enforcement and took her to Reading police to file a report against her abuser. She was referred to a local domestic violence shelter in October 2024.
About four months later, Selena Zavala was murdered by her abuser, who also shot and nearly killed their two-month-old daughter.
Erasmo Zavala and his wife stepped in to care for the baby through months of recovery.
In February 2025, the couple applied for U visas, a special federal immigration protection for undocumented victims and witnesses who cooperate with law enforcement. Still grieving the loss of their daughter, they hoped the program would provide stability and protection while they took care of their medically fragile granddaughter.
Two months later, Erasmo Zavala was arrested by ICE on his way to work.
Zavala’s case is an example of how a new Trump administration policy is putting survivors and victims of violence and human trafficking at risk of deportation. Immigration attorneys and advocates argue these enforcement guidelines are undermining U visas and other humanitarian programs created to protect undocumented witnesses and victims of serious crimes.
Attorneys for Zavala argue his detention and rushed deportation process before USCIS’ initial review of his U visa application could have a chilling effect and deter immigrants in the community from reporting crimes and collaborating with police in investigations.
After being arrested by ICE, Zavala explained to the agents that he had a pending U visa application and that he had cooperated with the Berks County district attorney's investigation into his daughter’s murder. But according to Zavala’s testimony in court filings, ICE agents told him there was “nothing they could do,” and that they were taking him anyway.
A last-minute decision by a judge to grant Zavala a temporary restraining order stopped ICE from deporting him on a flight from Louisiana to Mexico. He was sent back to Pennsylvania, where he is currently being held at Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Philipsburg.
What are U visas, and who qualifies for them?
The U visa program was created in 2000 as part of the federal Victims of Trafficking and Violence Prevention Act. According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency in charge of adjudicating U visas, the program serves two purposes: “to strengthen the ability of law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute cases of domestic violence, sexual assault, trafficking, and other crimes,” and to protect the victims who suffered physical and psychological harm from those crimes.
To qualify for a U visa, applicants need to be a direct or indirect victim of certain serious crimes, cooperate with law enforcement investigations, and obtain certification from police or prosecutors confirming that cooperation.
Because the program is capped at 10,000 visas per year, applicants wait years, sometimes close to a decade, to receive a final adjudication. Due to backlog problems, lawmakers expanded protections for pending U visa applicants in 2008.
That law created the legal basis for bona fide determinations — an initial screening process that allows immigration officials to assess whether an application meets the basic legal requirements before making a final decision years later. People who are granted a bona fide determination can qualify for temporary protection from deportation and work authorization while their cases are pending.
Bridget Cambria, an immigration attorney at the firm Aldea PJC who is representing Zavala, said that if USCIS had issued a timely positive bona fide determination for Zavala, he would not have been subject to deportation.
Moreover, the crime that affected him is the type of serious offense Congress contemplated when it created U visa protections. These include murder, human trafficking, domestic violence, sexual assaults, and child abuse.
“In this case, we’re dealing with murder and the attempted murder of a child — you don’t get more serious than this,” Cambria said.
Although Congress authorized protections for bona fide applicants in 2008, USCIS did not formalize a determination process until 2021. Under that process, USCIS conducts an early review of U visa applications to determine whether there is enough evidence of cooperation with law enforcement and whether the applicant’s background check raises any public safety concerns.
USCIS maintains that, by statute, it has the discretion to grant work authorization and temporary deportation protections to people with pending U visa applications.
“We can't tell immigration what to do or what not to do. … We can tell them what Congress has obligated them to do. Congress obligated them to look at it and determine if it's a bona fide case,” Cambria said. “If they come out on the other side and they say ‘yes,’ then he should walk out.”
A family tragedy
On Feb. 17, 2025, Selena Zavala was shot and killed by her then-two-month-old daughter’s biological father, Jesus Peñaloza Cruz. He then shot the baby in the stomach before shooting and killing himself.
Court documents describe a Reading police officer running the wounded infant from the crime scene to a local trauma center, where doctors were able to save the baby’s life. The child was then transported to a pediatric critical care unit at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia, and later to a rehabilitation hospital in Allentown.
Zavala and his wife spent months by their granddaughter’s side during her long and complicated recovery, as she underwent high-risk surgeries, according to court filings. During the most difficult months, they closely monitored her condition, as she depended on a feeding tube and a colostomy bag.
(Spotlight PA is not naming Zavala’s wife because her U visa is still pending.)
The couple worked with the county to obtain legal guardianship of their granddaughter, which allowed them to make critical medical decisions about her treatment and ongoing care.
In October 2025, Zavala walked the streets of Reading during Safe Berks’ Silent Witness March carrying a life-size silhouette of his daughter. Beside him, his wife pushed their granddaughter in a stroller.
Zavala’s wife said that, given all her family has gone through, it would make sense that immigrants would not trust or feel safe going to the authorities.
“When the police needed information, [Erasmo] was always there to give them the information they were seeking. [ICE] arrested him for no reason,” she said in an interview conducted in Spanish. “Maybe if they had done their job, my daughter would still be alive today.”
The Berks County District Attorney's Office certified the U visa applications for Zavala and his wife, and sent a letter of support to aid Zavala in his legal defense.
District Attorney John Adams expressed concern about the chilling effect Zavala’s immigration arrest could have on victims or witnesses of crimes. He said that if ICE is going to detain people who have pending U visa applications, that could “put a significant damper” on his office’s ability to prosecute people who have committed crimes.
“He and his wife took custody and care of this child, who is an American citizen, and frankly, this was the only family that I am aware of that this child has,” Adams told Spotlight PA. “I'm very disheartened by the fact that at this point, this child is without [her] grandfather as a result of this action by ICE.”
Impact of recent Trump administration policy
In January 2025, ICE issued new policy guidance that rescinded a previous victim-centered approach that encouraged ICE agents to use discretion to avoid detaining victims and witnesses of crime. ICE is no longer required to identify or confirm whether a person is a potential victim of crime or if the person has a pending U visa application.
The memo also says a pending victim-based application to an immigration benefit “should not alone be considered a mitigating factor in ICE’s enforcement or removal decisions,” and that ICE will no longer request expedited U visa adjudications.
Cristina Velez, legal and policy director at ASISTA, a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of immigrant survivors of violence, said the new policy dismantled baseline protections that were previously given to victims and witnesses of crime.
“Instead of a victim‑centered kind of blanket discretion approach towards victims, the new policy announced a case‑by‑case determination approach,” she said. “So there’s no categorical discretion that’s owed to victims who apply for a U visa or one of these protections.”
In practice, she added, “without a more systemic approach, individual ICE officers don’t really have guidelines by which to exercise their discretion,” making it “exponentially harder” to prevent deportations of people who are supposed to be protected for coming forward.
ICE’s new enforcement policy faces a class-action legal challenge from immigrant rights organizations and eight immigrants who were targeted for enforcement despite having pending U and T visa applications. The lawsuit, filed in October 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, argues ICE is violating protections established by Congress by detaining and deporting applicants who already received temporary protections from removal through USCIS.
No order, no process
According to court filings and other records, ICE identified Zavala for enforcement after USCIS flagged him as an applicant with a prior immigration order following his biometrics appointment.
Zavala's attorneys claim ICE misidentified him as having an active order of removal. He received a voluntary departure order in 2010 and left the U.S. after the voluntary departure period expired. Under immigration law, when that period expires, the voluntary order automatically turns into an order of removal. Zavala’s attorneys argue that, because he did leave the country, the order was executed and is no longer an order of removal.
Cambria, Zavala’s attorney, said ICE skipped basic steps before treating him as deportable. They could have interviewed him, found out whether he had left the country after his voluntary departure, issued a new notice to appear, or formally reinstated his old order.
“No order, no removal proceedings, no process, because they didn't do anything,” Cambria said. “They just grabbed him and tried to rush him out.”
In his U visa application, Zavala had disclosed his immigration history, including that he stayed past his voluntary departure deadline and returned to the U.S. in 2015 or 2016, according to a court filing. Under the U visa system, applicants can qualify for waivers for past immigration violations, provided they disclose in detail the nature of those violations.
“A U visa won't waive serious criminal offenses, but it will waive small immigration violations almost automatically,” Cambria said. “The reason they waive those things, and the reason that those things even exist, is because they contemplate people with orders will be victims of crime, and they have to cooperate.”
ICE and USCIS did not respond to questions from Spotlight PA about Zavala’s case.
What’s next
On Wednesday, a federal judge from the Western District of Pennsylvania heard arguments from Zavala’s legal defense. Cambria asked for Zavala to be released from Moshannon, or for the court to extend Zavala’s temporary restraining order that is keeping him from being deported. Beyond temporary relief, Cambria is asking the judge to order ICE to set aside the 2025 policy memo in Zavala’s case, and to order a preliminary screening of Zavala’s U visa application.
The judge is expected to issue a ruling before Monday, when Zavala’s temporary deportation protection will expire. In that ruling, the court will also determine whether the removal order that is keeping Zavala in detention is valid and whether the order was executed when he left the U.S. after his 2010 voluntary departure.
Cambria hopes that a favorable ruling could set an example for other courts and help cases similar to Zavala’s going forward.