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
How Federal COVID-19 Relief Funding Can Support Immigrant Communities
Federal COVID-19 relief funding from the American Rescue Plan (ARP), intended for COVID-19 prevention and mitigation efforts as well as recovery and stability for communities—particularly those disproportionately affected by the pandemic—can be used to counter the harms endured by immigrant communities and to promote health and safety. One key way ...
How the American Rescue Plan Can Support Immigrant Communities
An equitable recovery requires investments in safety and health for immigrant communities.
La práctica mortal del ICE de abandonar en la calle a los inmigrantes con discapacidades y enfermedades mentales
Illustrations by Michelle Garcia
ICE’s Deadly Practice of Abandoning Immigrants with Disabilities and Mental Illnesses on the Street
The Biden Administration Is Trying to Speed Up Deportations
This week, the Biden administration will officially launch accelerated deportation proceedings for asylum-seeking families in 11 cities across the country. This means that families who’ve claimed asylum after May 28 have less than a year to defend their right to remain in the United States—an arbitrarily accelerated timeline given that asylum cases ...
Blog Post
Noora Barakat
Compassion, Not Confinement
How States and Localities Can Help Ensure Humane Housing for Unaccompanied Immigrant Children Awaiting Family Reunification
In the first five months of 2021, about 65,000 children were apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) after arriving in the United States unaccompanied by a parent or legal guardian. These children come to the United States seeking protection, stability, and a chance to reunite with their families, but are instead processed at federa ...
End the Cycle of Crises for Unaccompanied Immigrant Children
For the past decade, conditions in northern Central America have propelled the migration of vulnerable and often traumatized children to the U.S. border. Many of them arrive seeking refuge as they flee targeted violence, pervasive corruption, and natural disasters. The U.S. government’s failure to build a system for their adequate care and swiftly ...
Blog Post
Shaina Aber
Megan Mack
Eight Ways to Ease the Child Detention Crisis
Immigration Brief
More than a decade after the conditions in northern Central America led to increasing numbers of families and children arriving in the United States without their parents, the federal government has failed to build a humane system to ensure their welfare and safety. As a result, children as young as six are being detained in overcrowded U.S. Border ...
Implementing the Vision at the Local and State Level Summary
Advancing Universal Representation: A Toolkit for Advocates, Organizers, Legal Service Providers, and Policymakers
Universal representation—a public defender system for all immigrants facing deportation—is based on the fundamental belief that everyone deserves due process under the law. While a growing movement works toward a legally mandated and federally funded representation system, several counties, cities, and states have stepped up to fund deportation def ...
One Year Later, We Still Don’t Know How Many People in ICE Detention Have Been Exposed to COVID-19
Despite Vera’s efforts to track what ICE reports on COVID-19 in detention, the agency’s limited reporting remains insufficient for understanding the scope of this crisis and its implications for the treatment of people subject to detention in the future. Critical information—such as the total number of people at risk within facilities, who have bee ...
Blog Post
Noelle Smart
Adam Garcia
Even after I Won My Case, ICE Wouldn’t Let Me Go until My Lawyer Intervened
A Federal Defender Service for Immigrants
Why We Need a Universal, Zealous, and Person-Centered Model
The Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) recommends that the Biden administration draw from time-tested models, data, and knowledge to build a federally funded, universal legal defense service that provides universal, zealous, and person-centered defense to all immigrants. This federal defender service should be modeled on the criminal federal defender ...