12 Organizations Working to End Family Separation

by | Jun 19, 2018 | Weekly News Wrap-Up

The Trump Administration’s policy to separate children from parents who present themselves at a border-entry location to seek asylum has garnered a lot of needed attention over the last week. There are many organizations working to support families and children being held in detention centers. The Supreme Court has held that deportation is not a punishment, and while many of us presume that there is an inherent right to legal counsel, many undocumented immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers are not given free legal representation. While the U.S. has many laws offering protection for immigrant children and their families, the issue remains that these youth and their parents do not have the financial means to hire a qualified immigration attorney. Therefore, you will notice that many of the organizations listed provide much needed legal services in order to reunite families, and even help families remain in the U.S. legally.

Below is a list of organizations. We link to their website, profile on Guidestar, donation page, social media, and if they’ve published anything on what they’re currently working on. Additionally, the website Families Belong Together has a list of events and protests.

Al Otro Lado – Los Angeles, CA
Al Otro Lado is a bi-national, direct legal services organization serving indigent deportees, migrants, and refugees in Tijuana, Mexico.

ALDEA – The People’s Justice Center – Reading, PA
The concept of the Aldea (Village) is a community living together and caring for each other’s needs. In that spirit, the mission of ALDEA – The People’s Justice Center is to provide a holistic approach to meeting the multi-faceted needs of our immigrant community members, including through legal, social, educational, and medical services.

Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project – New York, NY
The Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP) prevents wrongful deportations by connecting refugee families to community support and emergency legal aid. They provide rapid representation at a distance, reaching families who could not otherwise access legal services in the United States.

Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project – Florence, AZ
The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project provides free legal and social services to detained adults and unaccompanied children facing immigration removal proceedings in Arizona. Their vision is to ensure that all immigrants facing removal have access to counsel, understand their rights under the law, and are treated fairly and humanely.

Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) – Chicago, IL
NIJC is dedicated to ensuring human rights protections and access to justice for all immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.

Immigration Justice Campaign – Washington D.C.
This is a joint initiative from the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the American Immigration Council. Their mission is to fight for due process and justice for detained immigrants.

Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) – Washington, DC
KIND serves as the leading organization for the protection of children who enter the US immigration system alone and strives to ensure that no such child appears in immigration court without representation. They achieve fundamental fairness through high-quality legal representation and by advancing the child’s best interests, safety and well-being.

Northwest Immigrant Rights Project – Seattle, WA
Northwest Immigrant Rights Project promotes justice by defending and advancing the rights of immigrants through direct legal services, systemic advocacy, and community education.

Safe Passage Project – New York, NY
The mission of Safe Passage Project is to provide free lawyers to enable at-risk undocumented immigrant children to secure the safe, permanent immigration status they are legally entitled but unable to access due to poverty. They fundamentally believe no child should face the immigration process alone!

Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) – San Antonio, TX
RAICES is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit agency that promotes justice by providing free and low-cost legal services to underserved immigrant children, families, and refugees in Texas.

University of California Hastings – The Center for Gender and Refugee Studies – San Francisco, CA
The Center for Gender and Refugee Studies – California (CGRS-CA) is the California-focused arm of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies based at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. CGRS-CA works to protect the fundamental rights of refugee women, children, and LGBT individuals fleeing persecution in their home countries by improving the quality of legal representation available to them here in California.

The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights – Chicago, IL
The mission of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights is to promote the best interests of unaccompanied immigrant children with due regard to the child’s expressed wishes, according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and state and federal law.