The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) opens a new office today, charged with highlighting criminal behavior by undocumented immigrants. VOICE, the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office, was one of the main priorities identified by President Donald Trump in his first five days in office. It will track crime trends, and work as a liaison for victims of crime and their families.
VOICE will be housed as part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In a press briefing on Tuesday, David Lapan, the spokesman for the DHS, said that many entities and offices perform similar functions for victims of crime, but ICE has the greatest level of understanding on immigration. This means that the new office will be able to keep victims and their families informed on both the criminal justice and immigration aspects of their cases.
The opening of the VOICE office will be one of the top accomplishments of the DHS in Trump’s first 100 days in office, according to Lapan. But a great deal of uncertainty remains over the nature of the operations or responsibilities of the office.
There is much greater latitude given to ICE on the sharing of information about specific immigration cases than is the case with other DHS agencies. But the exact scope of their authority to share that information with victims has yet to be revealed. Critics have already attacked the VOICE office as an attempt to inflame discrimination against immigrants by associating them with crime.