Immigration Evaluations

Immigration can be lengthy, stressful, and laborious. Having a strong mental health evaluation can make a significant impact on your case. At Gatewell, we take pride in offering comprehensive psychological evaluations to immigrants in our community. Whether you’re seeking support for an asylum, extreme hardship, or VAWA case, we’re happy to walk alongside you in this process, documenting what you need in order to strengthen your case.

Our director, Dr. Stacey Rosenfeld, was formally trained in psychological assessment over 20 years ago and later went on to receive advanced training in immigrant evaluations. Our staff has worked with hundreds of clients over the years, providing mental health assessments to people who come from all over the world, and our practice location in Miami positions us in a critical location to assist immigrants and their families with their psychological needs.

What We Do

We consult with immigration attorneys on a wide range of cases, including:

  • Extreme hardship waivers: Our psychological evaluation can be a critical piece of evidence documenting that family member relative would suffer extreme hardship if separated from the applicant or if driven to leave the US to relocate to another country in order to remain with the applicant.
  • Asylum cases: As trauma specialists, we are uniquely qualified to assess for PTSD symptoms and to assess for events and circumstances that significantly impact well-being, supporting asylum to the US in search of safer conditions.
  • Domestic violence (VAWA) cases: We are able to asses for signs and symptoms of abuse, detailing the psychological symptoms common for domestic violence victims, assessing credibility, and highlighting less common abuse dynamics.

We are also available for U Visa and T Visa cases.

We perform immigration evaluations in Florida, New York, California, and Pennsylvania, offering telehealth sessions, as well as in-person assessment in the Miami office. We have Spanish-speaking providers on staff and can collaborate with interpreters for speakers of other languages.

Our Approach

At Gatewell, you are not a case or file number. You are a human with a story.

We approach each immigrant we evaluate with compassion, care, and empathy. We may never fully understand the events that have landed you in our office, but we provide a welcoming, trauma-informed space for you to share the experiences, fears, and concerns that are central to your case. While immigration evaluations aren’t therapy, many report that the process serves as a springboard to important healing and recovery.

We provide a comprehensive assessment of an immigrant’s mental health functioning via clinical interview (two-three hours of meeting time across two occasions) and the administration of well-established, self-report measures. Our  reports are typically 12-15 pages in length, synthesizing data from various sources. They include all of the critical information that can help support a case, increasing the likelihood of a favorable ruling. Our immigration assessment fees reflect the time spent meeting with the immigrant (and possibly their family member(s), interpreting self-report measures, summarizing findings, and the writing of a thorough psychological report.

Contact Us

If you’re looking for a solid psychological evaluation by a team that’s conducted hundreds of mental health assessments with folks from all over the world, if you’re looking for trauma-informed professionals attuned to the specific symptoms associated with immigration, and if you’re looking for a compelling, comprehensive report to strengthen your immigration case, Gatewell is the place for you.