Last December, President Barack Obama announced an executive order that benefited up to 5 million undocumented immigrants. While this action made small strides for the nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants currently residing in the U.S., his administration has also done incredible harm to one of its most vulnerable populations: immigrant women.

Though it’s true that most of those deported have been men (93 percent, to be exact), women make up 51 percent of immigrants in the United States. It is these women who are left behind to act as sole providers for their families while managing the trauma — theirs and their children’s — when a male family member is deported. By failing to make administrative relief as broad as possible, women are separated from their families — and their contributions inside the home, as well as the often unregulated nature of their work outside the home, leave them without protection or support. But it gets worse.

Immigrant women are three to six times more likely to experience domestic violence than U.S.-born women. According to the immigrant rights organization We Belong Together, only a quarter of all employment visas are given to women as principal holders, meaning that two-thirds of immigrant women in the employment-visa category enter as dependents on their spouse's visa, with no ability to work themselves. This makes them more vulnerable to an abusive partner.

A bulk of the women and children are fleeing gang violence, organized crime or domestic violence in their home countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. It has been reported that a growing number of the unaccompanied children are girls; there has also been an increase in the number of mothers and pregnant women detained. Women and children are particularly vulnerable to abuse, both during the dangerous journey to the U.S. and while held in detention centers.

Those who show up on the U.S.’ doorstep seeking refuge from conditions we helped create are met with detainment that profits from their imprisonment, subjects them to sexual assault, sometimes ends in suicide and almost always results in family separation. The 2013 expansion of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) has been critically important, and has helped to save immigrant women from persecution and deportation. But what will save immigrant women from being brutalized by the U.S. criminal legal system?