PHOENIX - Maria never saw her husband explode until their wedding night, when he got angry at a guest and kicked a door. Five years later, he was pointing a gun at her head, threatening to shoot their two young children and saying he would harm Maria's family if she reported him.

Then the rapes began.

Maria was too afraid to report the abuse to the police. As an undocumented immigrant living in southern Arizona, she lived in fear that she would be deported if she made any contact with authorities.

Maria isn't alone. Untold numbers of immigrant women across the country suffer at the hands of husbands who know their immigrant spouses are terrified of being forced to leave the country and exploit that fear to continue the abuse.

In Maria's case, that meant her husband refused to file her immigration papers. Maria didn't have legal status in the U.S. even though she had lived in the country since she was 9, said Valerie Hink, a Tucson immigration lawyer from Southern Arizona Legal Aid who started handling Maria's case about eight years ago.

Hink, who recounted the details of Maria's case, said she couldn't put The Associated Press in touch with Maria because she did not have current contact information and declined to disclose her full name, citing privacy concerns.

"He would keep the children and she would be sent back to Mexico," Hink said as she looked over documents in Maria's case file. "We hear that threat all the time."

While their legal status makes illegal immigrants especially vulnerable to domestic abuse, experts say victims often have no clue what sorts of legal remedies are available to abused immigrants.

Spouses who are in the United States legally often use immigration status as a control tactic to keep victims from reporting abuse, said Montserrat Caballero, program director for Su Voz Vale, Spanish for Your Voice Counts, a bilingual and bicultural program in the Southern Arizona Center Against Sexual Assault. The program offers therapy, crisis intervention and referral services primarily to Latina assault victims.

"If you're an immigrant, there's an idea of 'You're breaking the law, you don't have any rights,' which is wrong. You have equal protection under the law," Caballero said.

If an immigrant is married to a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident, the immigrant's spouse can sponsor a petition to give the immigrant legal status.

But in abusive situations, the spouse will often threaten to cancel immigration papers and report the immigrant or her family to authorities, said Seattle attorney Ann Benson, director of the Washington Defender Association's Immigration Project, a program to advance immigrants' rights.

"They're essentially held hostage in this marriage because of their immigration status," Benson said. "Their abusive spouses kept green cards from them to wield control."

However, experts say most immigrants don't know the 1994 Violence Against Women Act gave immigrant women whose abusive husbands are legal U.S. residents a way out of their situation.

The act allows immigrants who can prove they have been victims of domestic abuse and would otherwise be able to gain legal status the ability to self-petition for a green card.

In the 2004 fiscal year, 5,076 such petitions were approved nationwide, which was 76 percent of the petitions the government took action on. Since the beginning of the 2005 fiscal year in October, the government has approved at least 4,300 petitions.

When Congress renewed the act in 2000, it added a provision to let undocumented immigrants who were victims of various violent crimes, including domestic abuse, apply for temporary U-visas as long as they agree to help with criminal prosecutions.

No U-visa applications have been filed since the law was created because the government is still developing regulations for the visas, said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokeswoman Sharon Rummery.

But instead of having the knowledge that would let them take advantage of immigration laws, experts say an unknown number of immigrant women live in fear.

That was the case with a woman interviewed by legal assistant Margot Mendelson for a 2004 article on battered illegal immigrants.

Even as police arrested her husband, the woman preferred to hide behind her house rather than face the authorities, according to Mendelson's article.

While her spouse was a legal U.S. resident and could easily petition for her immigration papers, the woman's status as an undocumented immigrant had her convinced she could be deported for contacting the police, according to the article.

The story of the woman, who was identified only by the alias Margarita, is representative of many battered immigrants, said Mendelson, who works in the San Francisco area.

"It's just this constant reinforcement that I am safe here and you are not," she said.

Most immigrants lack concrete resources or information about VAWA and do not know where to turn for help, said Cecilia Menjivar, an associate professor of sociology at Arizona State University.

Often, immigrants don't have access to phone numbers of agencies that could help them, either because they can't find the information in their language or don't know where to turn, Menjivar said.

"What is a woman going to do if she reports an abusive partner and has nowhere to go? She's not going to report it," she said.

Part of that is because there aren't many places that cater to different cultural backgrounds or even know how immigration laws apply to domestic abuse cases, especially in rural areas, Caballero said.

And when programs are available, few people know about them.

Phoenix immigration attorney Dori Zavala said hardly any of her clients know she can help them file a VAWA petition unless she determines the situation might fall under the statute and explains the law.

"They're guided a lot by what they hear in their community," Zavala said. "It would be good if there was more public knowledge about it."

Caballero agreed, saying most people who turn to Su Voz Vale hear about the program through word of mouth.

When police do get involved in domestic violence situations, it can be hit or miss whether an individual officer knows about VAWA, Hink said.

"It's uneven. There's some awareness at the administrative level. I don't think all the officers on the street are knowledgeable," Hink said.

Police departments including Phoenix, Yuma, Los Angeles, Denver and Houston don't track how many of the domestic violence calls they respond to involve illegal immigrants.

Los Angeles Police Lt. Paul Vernon said his department was more concerned with enforcing domestic violence laws than federal immigration statutes and didn't want to scare away immigrants who need help.

Los Angeles police give domestic violence victims a flier with resources they can contact, but Vernon said he didn't know if any of those agencies specifically deal with illegal immigrants.

Outside involvement got police involved in Maria's case 10 years into her marriage, Hink said. Maria's husband was driving drunk with the family in tow when Maria took his keys and jumped out at a stop sign. She ran into a nearby business seeking help and people inside called police, Hink said.

Police arrested Maria's husband that night. Shortly afterward, she met Hink.

"She came in interested in a divorce and I recognized her as a potential VAWA client," Hink said.

Hink said Maria had never heard of VAWA but was relieved to discover she had a legal recourse to remain in the U.S. Her application was approved within five months and she became a lawful permanent resident three years later.

"Now she owns a home. She's been independent, self-supporting and very successful as a person," Hink said. "You give them a chance, you give them the tools and she just took off."