Arrested or charged

The order of steps

1. Criminal lawyer first. They control what is said and written while the case is open.
2. Immigration advice before any plea. Your criminal lawyer and your immigration lawyer speak to each other. A plea that looks minor can carry serious immigration consequences.
3. Get the records. After the case ends, your lawyer pulls the charge, the plea, the disposition and the sentence for every arrest.
4. Then the immigration declaration. Written with your immigration lawyer, consistent with how the criminal case was resolved.

What immigration law says about survivors with arrests

• The self-petition. INA 204(a)(1)(C) provides that a self-petitioning spouse or child (not an abused parent, whom the text does not name) is not barred from good moral character by an act or conviction that is waivable for purposes of the petition and connected to the abuse.
• The domestic-violence deportability ground. INA 237(a)(7) provides a waiver for a person who was battered or subjected to extreme cruelty and was not the primary perpetrator, if the judge also finds self-defense, a violation of a protection order meant to protect them, or a crime with no serious bodily injury connected to the abuse. See the 237(a)(7) waiver.
• VAWA cancellation. Under INA 240A(b)(2), specified grounds and an aggravated felony conviction bar relief. See VAWA cancellation.
• The abuser's word alone. Under 8 U.S.C. 1367(a)(1), DHS and the Justice Department may not make an adverse determination of admissibility or deportability using information furnished solely by the abuser or the abuser's family. That rule does not apply if you have been convicted of a crime listed in INA 237(a)(2), which is one more reason the criminal case comes first. USCIS also does not apply it to the denial of an I-360, I-751 or I-765V (PA-2025-34).

None of these rules reaches the criminal court. Under the firm's reading, 8 U.S.C. 1367 does not bind state criminal or family courts. The criminal case is defended on its own terms.