How You Can Help Separated Families and Ensure Protection for Children
Kids in Need of Defense (June 28, 2018)
This page provides some simple steps and actions you can take to support and advocate for separated families.
This page provides some simple steps and actions you can take to support and advocate for separated families.
This fact sheet describes the process by which the Trump Administration carried out family separation and how the related federal court ruling Ms. L v. ICE addresses family separation.
ASAP has created a spreadsheet of Legal Referrals for Asylum-Seeking Families, which lists (1) hundreds of private immigration attorneys in many states and (2) information on pro se help desks and other limited scope representation efforts in various cities. Additional resources are available here.
This CICW practice brief provides recommendations about best practices for ensuring that children and/or their caregivers facing deportation are provided with necessary pre-departure and reintegration services to support safe and sustainable return.
Vera Institute of Justice and New America announce a new way to reach the Immigrant Connection Project (ICON). Parents and their advocates can now reach us for free via Facebook messenger from abroad, by toll free telephone from inside the United States or from immigration detention, or via email from anywhere.
The Women’s Refugee Commission and Innovation Law Lab launched a new database to help track family separations, to support family tracing, and to assist with the identification of trends. The database is simple, secure, and confidential, and it allows family separation data to be collected and organized in a centralized way to help push back against harmful practices and support litigation efforts on a case by case basis. WRC and ILL will share anonymized, aggregated data with collaborators on family separations and for use in policy advocacy and to facilitate reunifications. To sign up to use the WRC-ILL database and to obtain a login, please email intake@wrcommission.org. Questions may also be directed to intake@wrcommission.org.
The WRC’s intake form can be used to collect key information that can help removed parents connect to legal resources and other needed assistance. Questions highlighted in yellow are particular to the ACLU lawsuit; the form includes specific consents to share information with the ACLU and/or with WRC if there is interest in doing so. If you are helping a parent complete the form, please make sure you record their consent as desired. Completed forms may be sent to intake@wrcommission.org, or uploaded to the Dropbox account noted on the form. Questions may also be directed to intake@wrcommission.org.
These letters to providers (for case managers, etc) in English and in Spanish describe how children might express their grief and fear and provide suggestions about how to help parents help children in the context of family separation and reunification.
The Vera Institute is one of several organizations that has a family reunification tool. On June 29th, it launched the Immigrant Connection Project (ICON), a tool for parents who have been separated from their children as a result of the administration’s zero tolerance policy. They are unable to share any data from their database, but if they find a connection, they can connect a parent or their representative to an agency that has had contact with the child.
A free webinar from the Rapid Response program of the ABA Group: Civil Rights and Social Justice.