Immigration and Justice
Vera's Center on Immigration and Justice (CIJ) works with government, nonprofit partners, and communities to improve government systems that affect immigrants’ lives. CIJ focuses on two objectives: increasing immigrants’ access to legal services, and improving relationships between immigrant communities and law enforcement. The center administers legal services programs, develops and implements pilot programs, provides technical assistance, and conducts evaluation and empirical research.
Related Work
Building the Movement Summary
Advancing Universal Representation: A Toolkit for Advocates, Organizers, Legal Service Providers, and Policymakers
The movement for universal representation—the idea that every immigrant facing detention and deportation should have the right to a publicly funded lawyer if they cannot afford one—continues to gain significant momentum. As a result of local and state campaigns, more than 40 jurisdictions across the country now fund deportation defense programs. Wi ...
Rising to the Moment: Advancing the National Movement for Universal Representation
Years 1-3 of the SAFE Initiative
In 2017, the Vera Institute of Justice launched the Safety and Fairness for Everyone Network—now known as the SAFE Initiative or “SAFE”—to counter the fundamental and urgent injustices facing immigrants caught up in the nation’s immigration enforcement system. With roots in Vera's work for the past 15 years building the government-funded removal de ...
Tracking COVID-19 in Immigration Detention
A Dashboard of ICE Data
Series: Target 2020
The Tipping Point for Universal Representation for Immigrants
In early October, ICE reported that, within a six-day span, it arrested 172 immigrants across six “sanctuary cities”: Baltimore, Denver, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Washington, DC. These cities all have policies in place that are intended to foster trust between local law enforcement and immigrants in their jurisdictions, and yet parents, ...
Blog Post
Melissa Garlick
Annie Chen
Evidence Shows That Most Immigrants Appear for Immigration Court Hearings
The United States confines hundreds of thousands of immigrants in prison-like detention facilities at a cost to taxpayers of billions of dollars each year. Expanding use of civil detention is often justified by the government as being necessary to ensure that immigrants continue to attend court proceedings. This fact sheet reviews evidence from the ...
Support Universal Representation: SAFE Initiative 101
The SAFE Initiative is a unique collaboration among governments, immigration legal service providers, and advocates building a movement for universal representation for people facing detention and deportation. Universal representation advances a public defender system for people facing deportation, one in which every person facing deportation is re ...
Universal Representation Advances Racial Equity for Immigrants Facing Deportation
Adom’s story is a case in point. A Black man from West Africa, Adom found himself subject to a traffic stop, in which the officer reportedly stopped him for a burned-out taillight and subsequently cited him for driving with a suspended license. As Adom was never notified his license had been suspended, he went to traffic court to challenge the tick ...
Blog Post
Annie Chen
Community Supervision Proves Detention is Unnecessary to Ensure Appearance at Immigration Hearings
The United States detained 486,190 immigrants in prison-like conditions in 2019, inflicting unnecessary physical and emotional harm on vulnerable people at a $3.1 billion cost to American taxpayers. The government justifies this mass detention by assuming that immigrants will fail to show up to deportation proceedings unless they are confined. The ...
Centering Black Voices in the Struggle for Immigrant Rights
Blog Post
Kica Matos
Nana Gyamfi
Federal Immigration Enforcement Agencies Are a Threat to Our Civil Liberties
As outrage over police violence and extrajudicial killings of Black Americans have led to widespread protests across the nation in recent weeks, our country has borne witness to the consequences of police militarization and what a lack of police accountability means for whole swaths of American communities. But there also exists a vast army of fede ...
Blog Post
Kica Matos
Shaina Aber
Express Injustice
Expedited Immigration Hearings Pose Danger to Detained Children’s Right to a Fair Process
Series: Covid-19
Without an attorney, I might still be confined in a detention facility with COVID-19
It could have been very bad for me when people started to get sick with coronavirus, but I had good lawyers to fight for me. When they told me I would get out, I was very nervous. I was shaking because I couldn’t believe what was happening. I was excited, but my body was shaking. Sometimes I can’t even believe that I am out, after 21 months. It fee ...