By Cheryl Platzman Weinstock, KFF Health News

National Domestic Violence Hotline: People who have experienced domestic abuse can get confidential help at thehotline.org or by calling 800-799-7233.

The immigrant from India believed her husband when he said that if she wasn’t gone by the time he got to their Georgia home in 10 minutes, he would kill her.

She said her husband and his family, who are also immigrants, abused her throughout their marriage, beating her with a belt, pouring hot water on her, cutting her, and pushing her head through a wall.

“Several times I tried to escape, but they found me and brought me back home,” said the woman, who is in the country illegally and spoke on the condition of anonymity because she is afraid being identified would harm her chances of gaining legal status.

With no time to run after her husband’s call in July 2020, she dialed 911, even though she knew she could be deported. The police arrived to find the husband threatening her with a knife in front of their young children, she recalled. He was arrested but not prosecuted, she said.

The woman and her children sought services from the Tahirih Justice Center, a national nonprofit organization that serves immigrant survivors of gender-based violence. She is still winding through the immigration process five years later.

Besides immigrants’ increased vulnerability to sexual violence, they face a host of mental health and physical challenges, researchers say. They have high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, suicide, and anxiety, according to a 2024 study.

“Personally, I know anxiety related to the current political climate is precipitating expensive emergency room visits and negatively impacting people’s ability to get to work and make a living,” said Nicole E. Warren, a nurse midwife and an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in Baltimore.

Immigrants without legal status also face increased rates of chronic conditions and higher death rates from preventable diseases due to their limited access to health care and their fear of seeking it, advocates say.

“One of our clients was so afraid to leave her home that she avoided seeking medical care during her pregnancy, out of fear of interacting with ICE,” said Miriam Camero, director of client advocacy, social services, at Tahirih.

Food banks have reported that many immigrants in need of food assistance have stopped coming, for fear of deportation.

It has always been difficult for people without legal immigration status to get help when they need it. The Trump administration’s crackdown on people in the country illegally has intensified the pressure. The situation has also hampered the advocates and attorneys who defend their rights.

“We’re working extra hours to do all the work,” said Vanessa Wilkins, executive director of Tahirih’s office in Atlanta. “The safety planning and added protection that clients might need, including documents just to make sure they are safe, can definitely make you feel overwhelmed.”

U Visas

For domestic abuse survivors without legal status, like the woman from India, going to the authorities seems more fraught amid the immigration crackdown, said Maricarmen Garza, chief counsel of the American Bar Association Commission on Domestic & Sexual Violence.

“There are just no guarantees,” Garza said, “especially with how law enforcement is intertwined in enforcing immigration law.”

In more than half of states, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can collaborate by formal written agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies to identify and remove people in the country illegally. Advocates say this can interfere with victims’ efforts to get a certificate to file for a “U visa,” which would allow them to live and work in the U.S. with the possibility of lawful permanent residency.

The battered woman from India recalls police telling her that if she did not press charges, she could get a certificate for a U visa. She agreed to their suggestion but recalls the anxiety of filing about five abuse reports over two years to get the certificate. “I got panic attacks just writing them down, because it meant I was reliving the situations again,” she said.

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When asked for comment about the difficulties immigrant domestic violence victims face, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson touted President Donald Trump’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration. “The president’s successful effort to deport criminal illegal aliens is making all victims safer and ensuring they will never again be harmed by dangerous criminal illegal aliens,” Jackson said in a statement. She said “allegations without evidence” that immigrants have been told to drop charges “should not be taken seriously.”

Immigrant women without legal status can be particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation because of language barriers, as well as cultural and social isolation, researchers have found.

According to a 2023 report, lifetime rates of abuse by intimate partners range up to 93% in some immigrant groups, compared with about 41% of U.S.-born women experiencing such abuse in their lifetime.

As the Trump administration reshapes the country’s immigration system, survivors of violence who entered the country illegally have a tough time proving their abuse and trauma to get relief, advocates say.

A refugee health and asylum program at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore provides immigrant victims of abuse with free forensic evaluations to support their claims for humanitarian relief, including applications for U visas.

Warren, the program’s associate director for women’s health, said that in the past, a written affidavit of the clinic’s findings was enough to corroborate an applicant’s legal accounts of past trauma.

“Now, we are getting requests for our in-person testimony,” Warren said.

Application Backlogs

The woman from India applied for a visa after she received a certificate from law enforcement allowing her to do so in 2023. Hers is one of nearly 11.6 million pending visa applications, according to data through June — the highest volume of cases ever recorded by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The number of pending U visa applications is 415,000, according to the agency.

Only about 10,000 U visas are issued per year, and it can take more than seven years to process applications, Garza said.

Adding to the pressure, the Trump administration has reduced the availability of Section 8 housing, which helps low-income individuals and others pay their rent. As of September, people without legal authorization to be in the United States are not eligible to receive rental help over U.S. citizens.

“If Tahirih wasn’t behind me, I could be homeless,” said the woman, who said she can afford only half her rent.

Victims’ advocates say they are working harder than ever to support their clients but are stretched thin as they face federal funding cuts and increased demand.

The Tahirih center reported a 200% increase in call volume in the four months after Trump took office, compared with the same period last year.

“At the end of the day there are a lot of emails and a lot of people we aren’t able to reach as quickly as in the past,” said Casey Carter Swegman, the center’s director of public policy.

To reach immigrant survivors of abuse who are afraid to come forward, advocates are “getting back to basics,” said Joanna Otero-Cruz, executive director and president of the Philadelphia group Women Against Abuse.

“We’re doing grassroots outreach to hairdressers and other small-business owners,” she said. “They’re the eyes and ears for us.”

In Riverhead, New York, a 38-year-old woman who emigrated from El Salvador said she has twice been the victim of domestic abuse but was too scared to report it to police.

She said the second assault was by a man for whom she cooked and cleaned in his home. The woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of her sense of shame and her fears of deportation, said he raped her, took pictures of her naked, and threatened to put them on social media if she tried to go to the police. He then stalked her, she said.

Noemi Sanchez, Long Island regional coordinator for the Rural & Migrant Ministry, a nonprofit that supports farm workers, is working closely with the woman to elevate her self-esteem and help her understand that “no woman deserves to have a man mistreat them.”

Meanwhile, the survivor from India received a temporary work permit in 2024 and is employed as a certified nursing assistant, which “helps me survive,” she said.

“I have really come a long way,” she added. “It wasn’t easy. I had great support behind me. They didn’t let me down.”

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By KEN SWEET, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — President Trump nominated Stuart Levenbach as the next director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, using a legal maneuver to keep his budget director Russell Vought as acting director of the bureau while the Trump administration continues on its plan to shut down the consumer financial protection agency.

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Levenbach is currently an associate director inside the Office of Management and Budget, handling issues related to natural resources, energy, science and water issues. Levenbach’s resume shows significant experience dealing with science and natural resources issues, acting as chief of staff of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during Trump’s first term.

Levenbach’s nomination is not meant to go through to confirmation, an administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters. Under the Vacancies Act, Vought can only act as acting director for 210 days, but now that Trump has nominated someone to the position, that clock has been suspended until the Senate approves or denies Levenbach’s confirmation as director. Vought is Levenbach’s boss.

The CFPB has been nonfunctional much of the year. Many of its employees have been ordered not to work, and the only major work the bureau is doing is unwinding the regulations and rules it put into place during Trump’s first term and during the Biden administration.

While in the acting director role, Vought has signaled that he wishes to dismantle, or vastly diminish, the bureau.

The latest blow to the bureau came earlier this month, when the White House said it does not plan to withdraw any funds from the Federal Reserve, which is where the bureau gets its funding, to fund the bureau past Dec. 31. The White House and the Justice Department used a legal interpretation of the law that created the bureau, the Dodd-Frank Act, that the Fed must be profitable in order to fund the CFPB’s operations. Several judges have rejected this argument when it was brought up by companies, but it’s never been the position of the government until this year that the CFPB requires the Fed to be profitable to have operating funds.

“Donald Trump’s sending the Senate a new nominee to lead the CFPB looks like nothing more than a front for Russ Vought to stay on as Acting Director indefinitely as he tries to illegally close down the agency,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, in a statement.

The bureau was created after the 2008 financial crisis as part of the Dodd-Frank Act, a law passed to overhaul the financial system and require banks to hold more capital to avoid another financial crisis. The CFPB was created to be a independent advocate for consumers to help them avoid bad actors in the financial system.

By ILLIA NOVIKOV

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A large Russian drone and missile barrage on Ukraine’s western city of Ternopil killed at least 25 people, including three children, authorities said Wednesday, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went to Turkey in search of diplomatic support for his fight against Russia’s invasion.

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The nighttime attack hit two nine-story apartment blocks in Ternopil, located around 120 miles from the Polish border, according to Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko. At least 73 people, including 15 children, were injured, emergency services said.

At least 19 among those killed were burned alive, including three children aged 5, 7 and 16, Klymenko said. Two dozen people are still unaccounted for, he said on national television, and rescuers expect to work at least two more days to complete the search of rubble.

Russia fired 476 strike and decoy drones, as well as 48 missiles of various types, at Ukrainian targets overnight, Ukraine’s air force said. The bombardment included 47 cruise missiles, with air defenses intercepting all but six of them, the air force said. Western-supplied F-16 and Mirage-2000 jets intercepted at least 10 cruise missiles, it said.

“Every brazen attack against ordinary life indicates that the pressure on Russia (to stop the war) is insufficient,” Zelenskyy wrote on the messaging app Telegram.

Zelenskyy meets with Turkish president

Zelenskyy met with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara later Wednesday as part of his efforts to diplomatically isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin and bring more international pressure to bear on him. Putin has so far resisted making compromises, despite U.S. pressure.

In brief statements to the press, Zelenskyy and Erdogan expressed their commitment to finding a peaceful settlement. Turkey is a key broker in the Black Sea region, preserving relations with both Ukraine and Russia.

“We count on the strength of Turkish diplomacy, on (how) it’s understood in Moscow,” Zelensky said.

Zelenskyy said before the talks that he had seen “some positions and signals from the United States” about the war. He didn’t elaborate but tough new American sanctions on Russia’s oil industry, devised to push Putin to the negotiating table, are due to take effect on Friday.

A senior Turkish official initially said that U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff would join Zelenskyy in Turkey, but backtracked later in the day and said Witkoff wouldn’t be coming. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity Tuesday because he wasn’t allowed to speak publicly about the arrangements.

An Army official confirmed Wednesday that U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is in Ukraine for negotiations. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive travel plans, said that Driscoll is accompanied by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and Gen. Chris Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa.

Romania and Poland scramble fighter jets

Ternopil sits in a part of relatively peaceful western Ukraine, where many people from the east and south moved to as they fled danger along the front line.

Almost 50 people were injured in Russian strikes on three other Ukrainian regions.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said it attacked Ukrainian energy facilities and military-industrial targets, including long-range drone depots, in retaliation against strikes by Kyiv on Russian territory.

Two Eurofighter Typhoon jets and two F-16s were scrambled in Romania when a drone entered the NATO member’s airspace during the Russian attacks, Romania’s Ministry of National Defense said.

The Polish military said that Polish and allied aircraft were deployed in the middle of the night as a preventive measure. Poland’s Rzeszów and Lublin airports were closed temporarily to prioritize military aviation, the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency said.

In northeastern Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, Russian drones injured 46 people, including two girls, the head of the regional military administration, Oleh Syniehubov, wrote on Telegram. Drones hit several city districts, at least 16 residential buildings, an ambulance station, school and other civilian infrastructure, he said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday that Ukraine fired four American-supplied ATACMS missiles at the Russian city of Voronezh on Tuesday. All four were shot down, the ministry said, but the debris damaged a private house, an orphanage and a gerontology center. There were no casualties, the ministry said.

Ukraine’s General Staff on Tuesday reported firing ATACMS missiles at Russia without offering details.

Associated Press writer Stephen McGrath in Leamington Spa, England, contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

In St. Paul, two parks-based nonprofits are poised for a merger.

The St. Paul Parks Conservancy, which launched in 2008 to promote the city’s park system, will effectively absorb the Great River Passage Conservancy, which was established in 2018 to advocate for better public access to the Mississippi River. On Jan. 1, the two boards will merge while retaining key staff, including Parks Conservancy executive director Michael-jon Pease and Great River Passage interim executive director Jodi Massey, though their titles will change.

Massey noted that about half of the city’s parklands sit along the river itself. Members of both organizations “felt like there was just a lot of overlap in the work that we were doing,” she said, and “confusion in the marketplace about who you come to if you have concerns about parks. (That led to) a really wonderful conversation with our board members and it felt like a really good fit.”

The new organization will retain the name St. Paul Parks Conservancy and be led by Pease, its president and chief parks champion. Shari Blindt will serve as director of Parks and Play, and Massey will remain director of Great River Passage.

Over the past five years, the Parks Conservancy has raised $5 million toward citywide parks initiatives, from the revitalization of Rice Park and the opening of downtown Pedro Park to a field project at the new North End Community Center. An Equal Play Initiative has aimed to add sport courts and replace outdated equipment in neighborhood playgrounds. There’s even a conservancy-sponsored coloring book about the city’s parks.

The Great River Passage Conservancy has focused on more long-term projects, advocating for a Mississippi River Learning Center near Watergate Marina, a 1.5-mile downtown river balcony, and an East Side River District spanning 1,000 acres.

The Great River Passage Conservancy grew out of a Mississippi River master plan adopted by the city in 2013.

“That’s a long time ago,” Massey said, though “the desire to be connected to the river hasn’t changed.”

The merged organization will operate on a budget of $1.4 million for 2026 and maintain the equivalent of three and a half staffers. Pease said the two organizations contracted strategic coaching consultants about the mechanics of a merger, and “they’d never had one that was this straightforward and this simple.”

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