Support Our Service Members Through the Military Assistance Program!

Established in 2007, the MIlitary Assistance Program (MAP) is a joint initiative between the American Immigration Council and the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) that provides pro bono immigration assistance to active duty U.S. military service members, recent veterans, and their families across the United States and abroad. With military attorneys often lacking specialized immigration expertise to assist service members, AILA members have stepped up to help over the past 13 years. With their dedication and support, MAP has been able to match more than 2,700 military service members and veterans with volunteer immigration attorneys. In 2019 alone, MAP provided assistance to 352 military service members in the following areas:

AILA member and MAP volunteer Margaret Stock with military service members during the AILA Annual Conference in San Francisco, June 2018.

With MAP’s help:

• Service members and their family members become permanent residents and U.S. citizens.
• By securing visas and green cards, service members are reunited with their fiances, spouses, children, and parents living abroad.
• Undocumented family members explore the possibilities to gain immigration status.

Most of all, MAP provides peace of mind to our service members so that they do not live in fear of a family member’s deportation or loss of status. They can instead focus on their futures and serving our country.

Please help us serve the military community by donating today. Every dollar you contribute goes toward ensuring service members have access to vital immigration assistance.

What Service Members and Volunteers are Saying:

“Words cannot express our innermost gratitude to (my MAP attorney) for their coordination and effort to make my wife joining me a reality…their response to us and assistance was top notch.” - Service Member Emmanuel A.	“(My MAP attorney) did not give up, helping me file several petitions to USCIS. I am thrilled to be a US Citizen now, and among the people I am truly grateful for getting me there, stand AILA through their Military Assistance Program.” - Service Member Tounde A.

“...Thanking a military member for her or his service is appreciated but offering my time to serve a military member’s loved one was my way of showing my appreciation.” Alma Montes de Oca, MAP Volunteer and AILA Member, Arizona

The American Immigration Council regularly partners with private firms and nonprofit organization on our litigation.  Please contact us to explore potential opportunities to collaborate.

The American Immigration Council, AILA’s non-profit partner, hosts several special events, panels and sessions during the conference, including:

The problem.

Access to legal counsel is a core American value and is the cornerstone of our justice system. But America has a deportation system that lacks fairness and basic due process, and every day the enforcement dragnet is widening. It detains immigrants in remote locations, limits their access to information and legal services, and yet expedites their deportation. At the same time, more than 80 percent of detained immigrants are unrepresented by counsel, and only about one-third of immigration attorneys practice deportation defense.

Our solution.

The Immigration Justice Campaign – an initiative between the American Immigration Council, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and the American Immigrant Representation Project – seeks to change the playing field by preparing lawyers to be cutting-edge defenders of and advocates for immigrants facing deportation. There are thousands of attorneys across the country, both inside and outside the immigration bar, who are looking for opportunities to be part of this effort. We need volunteers from all fields.

In collaboration with partners, the Immigration Justice Campaign will give lawyers access to new strategies designed to promote zealous deportation defense, expand our networks and build new capacity. We will train, mentor and engage more of the legal community – and in the process, recruit new allies to our effort to reform the system.

What we will do.

• Train Lawyers to Use Aggressive Legal Tactics:

We will train attorneys to aggressively defend immigrants facing removal, upending many traditional practices in order to use every available tool to protect individual rights and challenge the growing deportation machinery.

• Increase Capacity to Provide Removal Defense:

By creating innovative mentorship programs, training lawyers of all experience levels, and recruiting more attorneys to this work, we will strengthen a national network that can represent individuals throughout the removal process.

• Coordinate Advocacy and Litigation:

We will amplify the impact of individual representation and the influence of our work by collecting data and stories, identifying trends, engaging in communications work, and coordinating with our partners to do advocacy and litigation nationally.

• Build a Movement:

Representation can be a transformative act that leads to a deeper commitment to the broader movement. We will connect attorneys and others mobilized by the hateful rhetoric around immigration and harsh enforcement practices to immigration reform fights, building power to affect real change.

Building New Partnerships.

We will collaborate with many partners, including immigrant rights organizations, law firms, law school clinics, and bar associations to accomplish the work of the Justice Campaign.  Some of our partners include:

• The American Immigrant Representation Project: AIRP is a newly created initiative to recruit and harness the power of large law firms for the important work of pro bono removal defense for detained immigrants, especially those with criminal convictions.
  
  
• The Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative: Led by Southern Poverty Law Center, SIFI provides pro bono legal representation to immigrants detained in the southeastern United States. It will begin at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, in collaboration with AILA, the Council, AIRP and the Innovation Law Lab.
  
  
• The Stand with Immigrants Campaign: SWI is a large-scale mobilization effort to activate lawyers and other professionals to protect and promote the rights of immigrants. It is a collaboration of AILA, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc, National Council of La Raza, Immigration Advocates Network, Pro Bono Net, and the Advocates for Human Rights.

What can I do to help?

If you are new to removal defense and want to get trained; if you want to volunteer to represent detained immigrants; or if you are an expert in removal defense or federal court litigation and want to mentor – then join our community of committed, fearless lawyers ready to stand as the last line of defense against deportation. Tell us who you are and what you want to do, and we’ll share updates, training, and more information, go to www.ImmigrationJustice.us.

If you have additional questions about the Immigration Justice Campaign, please contact us at [email protected]. Questions about volunteering can be sent to [email protected].

In response to the human rights crisis unfolding in the detention centers and courts at the U.S.-Mexican border, multiple local and national legal organizations have formed the El Paso Immigration Collaborative (EPIC). The collective’s goals are to advance the right to legal representation for detained immigrants and to provide sorely needed, increased oversight of the immigration courts and detention centers in and around El Paso.

Asylum denial rates for immigrants held in the massive detention centers in the El Paso region are among the highest in the United States. Asylum seekers detained in these facilities are victims of a due process disaster made worse by a dire shortage of lawyers that makes legal representation either unavailable or unaffordable for the vast majority of the 3,500 immigrants detained in the region. EPIC is marshalling the resources of its partner organizations to create a multi-faceted, data-driven campaign that coordinates the work of immigrant legal rights organizations in El Paso with thousands of remote legal volunteers across the United States to provide remote representation on bond and parole cases.

Linda Rivas, Executive Director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, said, “The tragic mass shooting in El Paso brought to light the anti-immigrant fervor simmering in our nation. As EPIC seeks to provide essential legal services to asylum seekers, we hope our work will help El Paso heal and fight back against hatred. Within El Paso’s detention and immigration court ecosystem, a vulnerable individual’s likelihood of release from detention or a granted asylum claim is essentially nil. In response, EPIC partners are bringing our resources to the table to fight back against the deportation machine that has come to characterize the asylum process in El Paso. As organizations that work to increase representation rates and due process for detained immigrants, we know that access to counsel and a fair day in court can mean the difference between life and death for asylum seekers. By combining collaboration, innovative legal theory, and technology, we intend to transform El Paso from a jurisdiction nearly devoid of due process to one where justice abounds.”

EPIC currently involves members from the following organizations:

• Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center
• Diocesan Migrant & Refugee Services
• Catholic Charities of Southern NM
• Santa Fe Dreamers Project
• PALS Program
• Innovation Law Lab
• American Immigration Council and American Immigration Lawyers Association’s Immigration Justice Campaign
• ACLU of Massachusetts' Immigrant Protection Project