INNOVATIVE ADVOCACY
Direct Harm to Citizens
A Transformative Discretionary Factor for Immigration Decision-Making
Overview
Harm to citizens cannot be ignored.
Direct Harm to Citizens (DHC) would require DHS officers to treat direct harm inflicted on a U.S. citizen by a foreign national as a significant negative factor in discretionary immigration decisions.
THE PROBLEM
Policy Gap
U.S. immigration law exists to benefit the American people. Yet DHS has no policy requiring officers to treat direct harm inflicted on U.S. citizens by foreign nationals as a required factor in discretionary immigration decisions.
THE SOLUTION
DHC Framework
DHS already has broad discretionary authority across the spectrum of immigration decision-making. DHS simply needs to establish a national policy, a process to implement it, and identify a structure to manage it.
THE BENEFITS
Citizen Protection
The DHC framework ensures harm to U.S. citizens is considered regardless of criminal prosecution, while enabling citizens and licensed professionals to submit credible evidence that reduces investigative burdens.
What is “Harm”?
Harm is not limited to crimes.
Harm encompasses any direct harm of a U.S. citizen, including physical harm, mental harm, financial exploitation, legal harm, or social harm.
EXAMPLE 1
Physical Harm
Physical harm includes acts or credible threats of violence against a U.S. citizen, such as assault, battery, stalking, confinement, or intimidation that create a reasonable fear of bodily injury or physical control.
EXAMPLE 2
Mental Harm
Mental harm includes mental cruelty, coercive control, intimidation, manipulation, or emotional abuse intended to dominate, isolate, or compel a U.S. citizen’s behavior, even where no physical violence occurred.
EXAMPLE 3
Financial Exploitation
Financial exploitation includes intentional misuse of federal Form I-864 affidavits of support, failure to provide required financial or household support, theft, fraud, and deliberate financial waste.
EXAMPLE 4
Legal Harm
Legal harm includes misuse of legal or administrative processes, including false allegations, abusive filings, or strategic litigation to obtain or retain immigration benefits at a U.S. citizen’s expense.
EXAMPLE 5
Social Harm
Social harm includes deliberate isolation, reputational damage, or interference with a U.S. citizen’s professional, social, or community relationships, resulting in diminished standing or opportunity.
The Problem
Harm to citizens isn’t even a factor.
Despite broad discretionary authority, DHS lacks the policy, process, and structure necessary to ensure that harm inflicted on U.S. citizens is considered in discretionary immigration decisions.
PROBLEM 1
No Policy
DHS has no Department-wide policy requiring officers to treat direct harm inflicted on U.S. citizens by foreign nationals as a required factor in discretionary decision-making. In the absence of policy, harm to Americans is not consistently identified or weighed.
PROBLEM 2
No Process
Existing DHS reporting portals cannot ingest evidence or distinguish between frivolous tips and credible submissions from licensed professionals. Even if technically improved, there is no requirement that a credibility determination be made upon intake.
PROBLEM 3
No Structure
No DHS component is assigned responsibility for ensuring that harm to U.S. citizens is tracked, assessed, or incorporated across the immigration lifecycle. This structural gap prevents accountability and results in inconsistent, fragmented outcomes.
The Solution
An integrated citizen protection framework.
DHC establishes a unified framework that integrates policy, process, and structure to ensure harm inflicted on U.S. citizens is consistently identified, evaluated, and incorporated into discretionary immigration decisions across the immigration lifecycle.
SOLUTION 1
Basic Policy
The Secretary should issue a directive requiring USCIS, ICE, and CBP to consider DHC as a significant negative factor in all discretionary immigration decisions across the immigration lifecycle.
SOLUTION 2
Simple Process
DHS should allow U.S. citizens and licensed professionals to submit evidence of harm, require a credibility determination at intake, and route credible reports in real time to front-line officers.
SOLUTION 3
Dedicated Entity
The Secretary should designate a structure with responsibility for receiving, tracking, and managing DHC findings, and for transmitting those findings to front-line officers with USCIS, ICE, and CBP.
The Benefits
Putting Americans at the center of immigration policy.
DHC would be a landmark realignment of immigration policy—restoring focus on U.S. citizens, impacting millions of cases, honoring congressional intent, and requiring no new law, only the will to act.
BENEFIT 1
Citizen Protection
DHC realigns discretionary immigration decision-making with Congress’s core intent: benefiting U.S. citizens. Rather than treating citizen harm as incidental or irrelevant, DHC ensures that harm to Americans is affirmatively considered wherever DHS already exercises discretion.
BENEFIT 2
Immediate Impact
Because discretion exists at nearly every stage of the immigration lifecycle, DHC would affect more than 144 million discretionary decisions—including nonimmigrant admissions and determinations involving lawful permanent residents, parolees, and future applicants—upon issuance of a Secretary-level directive.
BENEFIT 3
Public Safety
DHC addresses harmful conduct that frequently escapes prosecution due to enforcement priorities, resource constraints, and evidentiary thresholds. It allows DHS to respond to real-world harm using existing civil immigration discretion—without requiring convictions or criminal charges.
BENEFIT 4
Resource Efficiency
By giving greater weight to evidence vetted by licensed attorneys, physicians, and mental-health professionals, DHC shifts much of the initial investigative burden to the private sector. This improves evidentiary quality, filters out frivolous complaints, and conserves DHS enforcement and adjudicative resources.
BENEFIT 5
System Legitimacy
When Americans see that harm to citizens is ignored while benefits are granted or preserved, trust in the immigration system erodes. DHC restores confidence by making clear that lawful immigration does not come at the expense of American victims—and that the system protects those it exists to serve.
Scale of Impact
An immediate systemic solution.
Most immigration reform debates focus on narrow pipelines. Unlike program-specific reforms, DHC operates across the full range of discretionary immigration decisions, including admissions, benefit adjudications, revocations, and removal and detention priorities.
DHC Reform
DHC would impact approximately 132 million nonimmigrant admissions annually and 12.8 million lawful permanent residents across all immigration categories, dwarfing category-specific reforms in both immediate scope and real-world impact.
Source: DHS OHSS
H-1B Reform
While there is growing support for overhauling H-1Bs, recent statistics show approximately 755,000 H-1B nonimmigrant admissions each year—less than 0.6% of the more than 144 million cases DHC would impact annually.
Source: DHS OHSS
Asylum Reform
While asylum reform remains an important focus of immigration policy, DHS approved approximately 54,350 asylum applications in 2023—representing a fraction of one percent of the more than 144 million cases DHC would impact annually.
Source: DHS OHSS
Model Directive
DHS can implement DHC right now.
Our directive establishes Direct Harm to U.S. Citizens as a significant negative factor in discretionary immigration decision-making—no legislation or rule-making required.
Sign the Petition for Direct Harm to U.S. Citizens
To: Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security
We, the undersigned, respectfully petition the Secretary of Homeland Security to issue the attached Direct Harm to Citizens (DHC) Directive, restoring a foundational principle of American immigration law: that the immigration system exists to serve and protect the American people.
Immigration to the United States has always been a privilege, not a right. Congress vested the Department of Homeland Security with broad discretionary authority to account for facts and circumstances Congress could not fully anticipate in the public interest.
Yet the system has drifted from that purpose. DHS lacks a framework requiring officers to consider whether a foreign national has inflicted direct harm on a U.S. citizen when exercising discretion. As a result, serious harm to Americans is too often overlooked.
The proposed DHC Directive corrects this failure by establishing a clear policy, a credible process, and a durable structure to ensure that harm to U.S. citizens is treated as a mandatory and significant factor in discretionary decisions. It does not expand DHS authority or require new legislation; it guides the responsible exercise of existing discretion.
Most importantly, it protects U.S. citizens from foreign nationals who inflict harm on the people the immigration system is meant to serve.
We respectfully urge the Secretary to adopt the attached draft directive and to direct its prompt implementation across all DHS components.