Joe Abraham Takes Over ICE Victims Office After Daughter's 2025 Killing

Q: Beyond a hotline, what hidden tools does the revived VOICE office offer to families navigating unimaginable loss?

Beyond a hotline, the revived VOICE office offers families a case-navigation and victim-support system inside ICE. Its staff can help victims and relatives understand the immigration enforcement and removal process tied to an offender’s case, and provide access to releasable immigration and criminal case information. That means families may be able to learn an offender’s custody status, immigration history and case milestones without trying to decode the system on their own. VOICE also enrolls victims in DHS-VINE, the automated notification system that sends alerts by phone, text or email when a person in ICE custody is transferred, released or otherwise changes status. For families worried about safety or simply desperate for updates, that can provide continuous notice rather than one-off answers. The office can also make sure victims have a chance to submit victim impact statements, giving them a formal voice as a case moves forward. Just as important, victim liaisons refer families to grief counseling, mental health care, social services and local support providers nationwide. Through ICE’s broader victim-assistance network, families may also be connected to practical help such as interpreters, legal-service referrals, shelter, food and other emergency support, depending on the case. In effect, VOICE is designed not just to take calls, but to guide victims through the legal maze, keep them informed and connect them to trauma-informed care.

3 articles · Updated · Fox News · Aug 21

Joe Abraham started Friday as head of ICE’s Victims of Immigrant Crime Engagement office, saying he wants to guide other “angel families” after his daughter Katie was killed in Illinois in January 2025.
30 years in prison was the sentence given to Julio Cucul-Bol, a Guatemalan national who pleaded guilty after the drunken-driving hit-and-run death and was caught in Texas while trying to flee to Mexico.
VOICE was revived by the Trump administration in April 2025 after being shuttered under Biden, and Abraham said the role grew out of his advocacy work with DHS and a White House meeting with Trump.
897 calls have reached VOICE, which has assisted 588 victims and 185 family members; assault accounts for 35% of reported crimes, followed by rape or sexual assault at 17% and homicide or manslaughter at 10%.
Katie Abraham’s case also became a political flashpoint in Illinois, helping inspire Operation Midway Blitz, a Chicago-area enforcement action that arrested more than 4,000 illegal immigrants late last year.