100+ Law Firms and Companies Donated $20m+ in Pro Bono Legal Services to L4GG in 2022
Lawyers for Good Government mobilized more than 1600 legal volunteers from more than 100 law firms and corporate legal departments last year.
Lawyers for Good Government (L4GG) is proud to announce the results of its 2022 pro bono audit detailing donated legal services from law firms, corporate legal departments, and other volunteers to support its various programs.
More than 100 law firms and corporate legal departments donated more than 23,700 hours of pro bono legal services to support L4GG’s civil and human rights initiatives in 2022, including Lawyers for Racial Justice, Climate Change and Environmental Justice Program, Project Corazon, Reproductive Health Legal Assistance Project, and more. Collectively, these Pro Bono Partners donated more than $20 million in pro bono legal services to efforts spearheaded by L4GG last year.
Together, volunteers from top AmLaw ranked firms and Fortune 500 companies helped accomplish the following with L4GG in 2022:
Mobilizing 511 volunteers from more than 50 law firms and corporate legal departments to provide clear, up-to-date legal guidance to healthcare providers in 56 states and territories across the country;
Securing entry into the U.S. for 1347 asylum seekers, defending their human rights at the southern border;
Providing temporary security for over 200 Ukrainian nationals and their families living in the U.S. in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war; and
Training more than 700 communities from more than 25 states on how to secure federal climate funding in support of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing climate resiliency.
Of special note, the following law firms donated sponsorships or pro bono legal services in excess of $250,000 to L4GG in 2022:
Kirkland & Ellis
Goodwin
Orrick
Wilson Sonsini
White & Case
Linklaters
Mayer Brown
Nelson Mullins
Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP
Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
Dechert LLP
Proskauer Rose
Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel
Sidley Austin
“Kirkland & Ellis is proud to partner with Lawyers for Good Government on many of their important social justice initiatives. We are grateful for the opportunity for our firm to efficiently and effectively direct our resources and our lawyers’ skills to some of the most vulnerable populations among us,” said Jacqueline Haberfeld, Global Director and Pro Bono Counsel for Kirkland & Ellis.
“We are privileged to partner with L4GG on projects that positively impact climate change, help transform the lives of immigrants, and otherwise have broad social impact,” said Rene Kathawala, Pro Bono Counsel, Orrick. “The relationship with L4GG is enhanced by the skilled and dedicated lawyers that we work with at L4GG who provide such tremendous support to us.”
“We are thankful for L4GG’s dynamic partnership in recent years on so many initiatives to serve those in need. L4GG is consistently responsive, enthusiastic, and so knowledgeable in assisting us—they are a joy to work with,” said Luke Liss, Pro Bono Partner, Wilson Sonsini.
“We are proud to partner with L4GG in addressing the most important issues impacting our communities. Their ability to quickly mobilize law firms on large scale projects with a high level of skill and organization amplifies our efforts to secure human rights and equal justice for all,” said Andrew Compton, Partner, Linklaters.
“L4GG represents the very best of what our pro bono community can accomplish as a collective. Nelson Mullins is a proud supporter of this very special partner that stands out on the national stage in its ability to respond to of-the-moment community challenges and offer finely-tuned expertise, training modules and user platforms which have effectively mobilized the legal community on a national scale,” said Elisa Kodish, Pro Bono Partner, Nelson Mullins
“This past year, I signed a petition committing to take action to protect women’s rights,” said Brit Dufilho, partner at Hunton Andrews Kurth. “Plenty of groups made it easy to give money, but L4GG offered an organized avenue to use my skills as a lawyer to provide meaningful help. They put us face to face with stakeholders who told us why they needed our research and how it would make a difference. I’m grateful to be part of the significant work L4GG is doing to coordinate lawyers who are interested in making a difference.”
“We are so grateful that as one new humanitarian crisis quickly follows another, Lawyers for Good Government timely provides our attorneys with responsive opportunities and supports them in their work,” said Jonathan Baum, Director of Pro Bono Services, Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP.
“The projects we have with L4GG enable our lawyers to look beyond the individual case in order to make a difference on a larger scale. This is not only beneficial but essential given the key role the private sector plays in securing equal access to justice,” said Bill Silverman, Partner, Proskauer.
“Kramer Levin is proud to partner with Lawyers for Good Government to support its critical work to fight for human rights,” said Aaron Frankel, Partner and Co-Chair of Pro Bono Committee, Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel.
“Sidley is so grateful to be able to partner with Lawyers For Good Government and work together to secure the rights of women, immigrants, small businesses, and others, to ensure equal justice under the law,” said Sara L. Mandelbaum, Pro Bono Counsel, Sidley Austin.
URGENT: Tell President Biden NO to Family Detention
URGENT CALL TO ACTION:
ASK YOUR REPS TO JOIN L4GG
IN TELLING PRESIDENT BIDEN
NO MORE FAMILY DETENTION
Please take 5 minutes today to contact your representatives and senators to sign these two crucial letters to help us stop family detention:
Please call or email by COB today and ask your representative to co-sign this e-Dear Colleague letter being sent by over 30 of our Congress members to President Biden, led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, joining our call asking for President Biden to fulfill his promise to end family detention and expand legal pathways to immigration.
Please call or email today to ask your senator to co-sign this letter being led by Sen. Durbin addressed to the President opposing family detention. The letter closes tomorrow, March 23 at noon, so we'd appreciate your support in getting as many Dem Senate signatures as possible.
Lawyers for Good Government and many of our partner organizations have endorsed these letters and stand behind them with all our hearts. We desperately need more signers to get the point across that family detention is unacceptable.Here are some more resources:
Find your representative here: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
Find your senator here: https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
Find some good background and talking points on family detention here: https://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/issues/family-detention
Once you've shared the letters, let us know and ask your friends to join us in making calls! Tag us across social media platforms and hashtag it with #nosafedetention, pointing out the American Association of Pediatrics' finding that there is no "safe" amount of detention for children.
For more on why this topic is so urgent, read the following blog post by Alyssa Morrison, L4GG’s Reproductive Justice Staff Attorney, about her experience volunteering at Karnes Correctional Center.
Earlier this week, it was announced that the Biden Administration is considering reinstating family detention as a means of managing the increase in migration that is anticipated to follow the lifting of Title 42 COVID-19 restrictions at the border in May 2023. Following the disastrous implementation of the CBP One App and the proposed implementation of the asylum transit ban, this threat to return to the days of family detention is another nail in the coffin of the Administration’s promises to uphold the dignity of migrants and restore the integrity of our asylum system. For those who look to the Administration to fulfill these promises, this news is stunningly disappointing, but perhaps no longer surprising.
I come to L4GG as a reproductive justice policy attorney; I am not an immigration practitioner. But, I have seen firsthand the lack of humanity involved in the family detention system. Texas has several ICE detention centers. Among them is the Karnes Family Immigration Detention Center, located in a small Texas town about an hour southeast of San Antonio. As a law student participating in my school’s clinic program, I spent time working with asylum seekers at Karnes in 2017. Like other ICE detention centers, Karnes is run by the GEO Group–the private company behind much of the U.S. prison industrial complex. Any suggestion that these centers are not run like prisons, and their residents are not viewed with the same level of disregard that the U.S. famously affords the incarcerated, is controverted by this affiliation. And, the view from inside the center does little to discourage the comparison. Although, there is one noticeable difference in the residential composition: the addition of children.
During my time at Karnes, I worked with my fellow students to help the detained women prepare for their credible fear interviews–the process by which they would begin their fight for asylum protection. In order to ‘pass’ these interviews, the asylum seeker must convince the officer that they have a fear of return that is not only credible, but is rooted in one of the protected asylum categories. In other words, even if the threat to their safety if they return home is absolute, they must fit that story into an unfamiliar legal framework, often through the use of an unfamiliar translator, in order to have a hope of obtaining relief. Their status as detainees meant that many of the women entered these interviews uncertain, weary, and stripped of any remaining sense of agency over their circumstances. It also meant that their ability to access legal assistance to navigate the process was often at the mercy of the detention center itself.
In preparation for these CFIs, the women told us their stories. In rooms the size of a utility closet, they laid bare the details of the most delicate and excruciatingly personal moments of their lives to a complete stranger. For the mothers in the group, they were faced with the choice to have their child in the room with them, listening to the traumatic and often violent details of why they were forced to flee their homes, or to leave the child outside of the room, separated from them. On more than one occasion, their child made the choice for them, refusing to leave their mother’s side and relinquish that remaining piece of stability and safety. So, the women spoke and the children heard. And then, they were led back to their rooms by the officers–locked out of sight.
The discretion of those detention officers was evident each day that we showed up to work at the center. Upon arrival one morning, we were admonished for having left a tissue box in one of those closet-sized rooms rather than placing it back where we found it. For the infraction of bringing tissues to a crying detainee, we were threatened with not being permitted to return to the facility to provide legal services. There was a play mat on the floor outside of the meeting rooms, for the children. And the authority of the detention officers was on full display when it was used to sharply chastise a child for rolling a toy truck off of the play mat and onto the floor. These patterns of control repeated in big and small ways throughout our time at Karnes, as we heard stories of medical care being denied to both women and children, children being treated like prisoners, and access to attorneys being arbitrarily limited.
The system of detention that we witnessed at Karnes cannot be our answer to a call for equitable, safe and effective asylum.
A group of L4GG volunteers at Karnes Correctional Center.
“The cruelty of detention is obvious and unacceptable. As we look to the Biden Administration to end the use of Title 42 at the border and shape effective and humane processes for asylum seekers, we must demand that the most vulnerable are not treated as disposable, that mercy and compassion are not suffocated by administrative convenience and that the people who come to our borders seeking aid are met with the promise of freedom, not imprisonment. We call on our community to hold this Administration accountable and to remind those in power that “good government” is achievable only when we use it to protect the individuals and communities who need it most.”
The Making of a Front Page Story
On Sunday, March 12, the Washington Post ran a front page story about the physical hardships and digital hurdles facing asylum seekers in northern Mexico as they attempt to access our asylum system. The piece tells the story of a number of our clients in Reynosa and Matamoros, including victims of torture, families with young children, and others who are forced to rely on a glitchy smartphone app called CBP One to schedule their initial appointments with CBP at ports of entry. Because the app is so unreliable, they are stuck in dangerous, squalid conditions in border cities in Mexico, risking their life every day they are unable to secure an appointment.
A front-page story about Project Corazon’s clients and their difficulties access the asylum system.
If you haven’t yet read the story, please do - it’s an incredibly important piece about a human rights crisis that deserves your attention. In this post, however, we thought we’d provide a behind the scenes look into the work that led to the Washington Post story.
BACKGROUND
In January 2023, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) began requiring asylum seekers to apply for an appointment via the CBP One app before they reach a port of entry. In doing so, the agency stopped allowing pro bono attorneys, like Project Corazon staff and volunteers, to advocate directly on migrants’ behalf for humanitarian exemptions to the process. Now, asylum seekers are left to fend for themselves navigating an app whose terms and conditions and error messages are only in English, and which runs out of appointments in minutes.
At L4GG, we were seeing firsthand what impact this change had on our clients: they were stuck in ever worsening conditions in refugee camps in border cities in Mexico, trying desperately to find sufficient technology and wifi to access an appointment via a smartphone app. We met an asylum seeker who was severely injured while trying to find a wifi signal and others could only secure one appointment for their family, so were forced to choose between seeking asylum or separating their family.
The situation was already bleak, and yet last month the Biden Administration proposed a new asylum rule that could make things even worse. The new proposed rule, which if allowed goes into effect in May 2023, proposes that asylum seekers figure out how to use this app, or face a presumption that they are ineligible for asylum. We knew that to have a chance at making a change, we had to get the story into the mainstream, so people across the country would better understand the real-world implications of what is being proposed.
Initial Conversations
L4GG sent a communication to a number of immigration reporters about the Biden Administration’s newly proposed asylum rule as well as difficulties our clients were having with the CBP One app. Washington Post’s Arelis Hernández replied and asked if we had any specific client stories we’d be willing to share, as an exclusive, with the Washington Post.
We spent a number of days talking to our clients in Matamoros and Reynosa, vetting who would be a good candidate to talk to the media and finding out who was willing to share his or her individual story. Our clients are our heroes, so it’s no surprise that a number of them wanted to help advocate against these policies and get the word out. A handful of them said yes, and we let Arelis and her team know.
Coordinating a Border Trip
The Washington Post generously offered to put their weight behind this reporting by sending Arelis to Mexico as well as a photographer and videographer. To cross the border into these border cities is no easy feat. In Matamoros, a group of 4 U.S. citizens were recently kidnapped, and two of them were killed. In Reynosa, the cartels regularly wage violence.
We worked to make sure the Washington Post team had sufficient security crossing into the border and acted as their guides on the ground. At L4GG, we have worked in these spaces for years and have a number of partners on the ground, such as the Sidewalk School and a number of refugee shelters, who make it possible for our staff and volunteers to cross to meet with clients. We couldn’t have done this without them and their work is, rightfully, featured in the story as well.
We introduced them to partner organizations and asylum seekers from all walks of life, who graciously shared their stories. The Post captured photos of the conditions our clients are living in, which are dutifully documented in the final story. They also produced a short video overview of the issue.
After extensive fact-checking, the story was published this past Saturday, March 11, 2023 online and on Sunday, March 12, 2023 in print version of the Washington Post.
We’re thrilled with the final product and are so grateful to Arelis Hernández for her tireless reporting and to the Washington Post for publishing such an impactful piece. We hope you’ll take the time to read it and share it with your friends and family.
How You Can Help
We hope you’ll make your voice heard on this issue and consider submitting a comment against the proposed asylum rule that would make conditions on the border even more hopeless. We put together a webinar on the topic and resources on how to submit a comment here.
Last, but not least, we hope you’ll consider supporting our ability to continue doing this impactful work on behalf of asylum seekers and other communities facing insurmountable hurdles, by donating to L4GG here.
L4GG Joins Coalition of 22 Environmental Organizations Opposing Federal Highway Infrastructure Guidance
Lawyers for Good Government (L4GG) joined NRDC, Evergreen Action, and a broad group of 22 transportation, equity and environmental organizations to send a sharply worded letter to Federal Highway Administrator Shailen Bhatt on March 16, 2023 opposing the agency’s new guidance from February 2023 regarding state transportation spending.
L4GG Responds to House of Representatives Voting to Overturn the Clean Water Restoration Rule
Lawyers for Good Government’s (“L4GG’s”) Director of Climate Change and Environmental Justice, Jillian Blanchard, issued the following statement: “We recognize that water is an essential resource to all, and it is often the most overburdened communities and ecosystems that are most impacted by water pollution. The CRA is a dangerous tool that should not be used to invalidate the Clean Water Restoration Rule, which essentially reinstates crucial wetland and waters protections that were eviscerated under the Trump Administration. Clean Water is crucial to our ecosystems, our water supply, and our very way of life. Voting to remove the Restoration Rule using the CRA will take a sledgehammer to these protections and prevent the EPA from addressing the issue in the future. This vote is critical and threatens our right to clean drinking water and healthy waterways.”
Lawyers for Good Government Calls on Biden to Publicly Renounce Reported Plans to Reinstate Family Detention
Washington, DC (March 7, 2023) – In response to a report from the New York Times on Monday, March 6 that the Biden Administration is considering a return to the cruel practice of family detention, Lawyers for Good Government Executive Director Traci Feit Love said:
“Having organized thousands of attorneys to fight Trump’s unconscionable family detention policy, Lawyers for Good Government calls upon the Biden administration to publicly renounce and refute reports that it is considering reviving the inhumane practice of detaining families. Family detention is unjust, detrimental to the health of children, and harmful to the growth and survival of families. It has been condemned by innumerable human rights experts, medical societies including the American Academy of Pediatrics, and President Joseph Biden himself. In our President’s words, ‘Children should be released from ICE detention with their parents, immediately.’
Further, this misguided approach will only worsen the pressure on the border. Caging families is an abusive response to people trying to seek safety, and just like the Biden Administration’s failed CBP One rollout and proposed asylum ban, will only create more chaos while traumatizing children and families. If the Biden Administration wants to take action on border and asylum policy, it must do so from a basic recognition of its responsibility to welcome families seeking refuge, rather than detaining them.
L4GG urges the Biden administration to rejoin us on the right side of history, reject cruel policies such as family detention, and work with us to create a humane immigration system.”
To learn more about Lawyers for Good Government’s immigration initiative, Project Corazon, click here.
L4GG Calls on DOT to Reverse Course on Highway Guidance, Protect At-Risk Communities
Lawyers for Good Government condemns the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) for removing its support of climate and equity considerations in its guidance to states on how to spend $466 billion worth of funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law set aside for transportation projects.
On Friday, February 24 after complaints from congressional Republicans, FHWA issued a policy memo that rescinded its previous policy guidance urging states to use highway funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to combat the climate crisis and advance equitable access to transportation.
By rescinding this guidance, DOT is allowing states to pursue spending on projects that will worsen carbon emissions and exacerbate the climate crisis, split communities, such as adding new lanes to highways or building new ones. The new guidance means states would not need to prioritize investing transportation funds in new projects that would decrease carbon emissions, such as those for transit, bicycles or pedestrians, or those that would prioritize projects benefiting communities hardest hit by climate change, such as Jackson, Mississippi or New Orleans, Louisiana.
FHWA’s new policy memo directly undermines the Biden Administration’s previous commitment to climate justice and equity as outlined in Executive Orders 14008, 13985, and 14091 all of which charged the federal government with considering the climate crisis in all actions and advancing equity for communities that have long been underserved to address systemic racism in our Nation's policies and programs. FHWA issued this guidance merely two weeks after the Biden Administration touted its commitment to addressing racial equity in EO 14091.
Moreover, this new policy sets a dangerous precedent for other federal agencies charged with implementing the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act and other laws that allocate up to $2 trillion in climate and infrastructure investments. It is harmful enough that the FHWA is failing to stress the need for states to prioritize climate and equity in their Infrastructure spending, but if other agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, or National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration follow suit, then states will be free to ignore the climate crises and disadvantaged communities in their spending priorities. This will have a massive ripple effect as states are the number one recipient of these federal investments. If the federal government caves to Republican pressure now, this money can, and likely will, be used to exacerbate inequities by following the status quo of splitting communities with new freeways rather than providing public transit opportunities. Expanded highways compound the climate problem by increasing vehicle traffic and emissions along with noise, light, and odor pollution, all of which negatively impact the surrounding communities that are already dealing with air quality issues.
“For perhaps the first time in history, this Administration has an opportunity to address historic inequities and tackle the climate crisis by ensuring this once-in-a-lifetime federal investment goes where it’s needed most: towards reducing emissions and building equity infrastructure to prevent other water crises like those in Benton Harbor, Michigan and Jackson, Mississippi. But none of this will happen if federal agencies cower to Republican pressure and allow conservative governors to continue to ignore climate change and failing water systems and to expand unnecessary roadways, further dividing communities. Change will only come if federal agencies create helpful guidance for states to promote funding for climate projects and communities in need. We cannot miss this moment.”
- Jillian Blanchard, Director of L4GG’s Climate Change Program
L4GG: Biden’s Proposed “Asylum Ban” Will Turn Asylum into a Lottery, Where the Stakes are Human Lives
Lawyers for Good Government condemns policies proposed yesterday by the Biden administration that would have the effect of dramatically restricting access to asylum. Under this new asylum ban, many presenting at our southern border would be unable to seek refuge in our country unless they have already sought the protection of another country that they passed through, have been granted permission to enter the U.S. ahead of time, or have obtained an appointment through the demonstrably ineffective CBP One app. If they are unable to meet one of these prerequisites, they will be presumed ineligible for asylum, regardless of the merit of their claim. This is in direct conflict with established statutory and international law. We call on the administration to immediately withdraw the rule and instead pursue pathways to fair, orderly migration that restore full asylum.
As a 501(c)(3) pro bono legal services and advocacy organization, L4GG is among a handful of organizations with attorneys representing asylum seekers in Mexico. Our Project Corazon clients are LGBTQ+ people, political activists, racial minorities, victims of abuse, and other people fleeing violent persecution in their countries of origin. The majority, if not all, of the countries through which our clients transit have poorly functioning or non-existent asylum systems. Further, many of them pose the same dangers to our clients as their home countries.
We have personally seen how CBP One, the app upon which the asylum ban is built, harms the most vulnerable asylum seekers and can pose a nearly-insurmountable obstacle to urgent claims of asylum. Internet access is so spotty as to be nearly unusable in Reynosa, with even our own attorneys being unable to reliably operate the app from our state-of-the-art smartphones. Every day, asylum seekers wake up at 3:00 AM in order to get sufficient wifi to prepare their applications and be able to submit them right at 8:00 AM, before all the appointments are gone. The search for an internet signal is so desperate, multiple people have been injured while placing themselves in precarious situations just to get service.
Then, there are those who are held hostage by technological glitches and cannot even request appointments. People like *Oralia, who was kidnapped, beaten and tortured at the hands of criminals in Mexico. She and her child still have a price on their heads. They hide in fear and have been denied entry by port officials, even after our attorneys presented evidence of her emergency medical needs. Every time she goes through the process of seeking an appointment in the app, she is kicked out and it sends her back to the beginning of the process. The proposed asylum ban will severely exacerbate the already-extreme barriers to entry created by the CBP One App.
Just this week, L4GG witnessed families forced apart by the use of CBP One for Title 42 exemptions. By using the app as the exclusive way to seek asylum, the Biden administration is turning our entire asylum system into a lottery, where the stakes are human lives. Policy that prioritizes political expediency over the protection of human rights always has the greatest and most severe impact on the most vulnerable populations. The proposed asylum ban is no different. Its implementation will disparately harm communities of color, members of the LBGTQ+ community and those with the fewest resources to advocate for themselves and their families.
We call on the Biden administration to remember its promises made on the campaign trail and in executive orders, withdraw this rule, and restore full asylum.
*Pseudonym to protect her identity.
Families are Being Separated At the Border and We Need Your Help RIGHT NOW.
Without warning yesterday, families are being forced to separate in the Rio Grande Valley and we need your help to fight it.
Photo taken 2/13/23 of families refusing to leave the Reynosa-Hidalgo bridge after they were told of the new change in policy that would force them to separate.
Yesterday, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) at Hidalgo and Brownsville ports of entry changed their policies overnight to stop allowing families to present together at their Title 42 exemption appointments, requiring individual appointments for each family member (which is impossible to achieve due to extremely limited spots).
This new policy is forcing parents to make the impossible decision of either separating from their children to pursue safety and an asylum claim, or to stay in immediate danger in Mexico together with their family intact. These are parents and families who had made appointments and crossing arrangements weeks ago in the CBP One App, only to be told of a devastating new policy in person once they reached their appointment.
Now they are forced to choose between seeking asylum or keeping their family together, an impossible decision that will lead to trauma, violence, and death for hundreds of our clients.
Photo of a family that was separated yesterday. The father went across to pursue asylum; the mother and children remain in Mexico
Our Project Corazon team has alerted us that people waiting for their chance to seek asylum are incredibly despondent, and the situation is a ticking time bomb. Families have banded together and refused to leave the bridge where they arrive for their asylum exemption appointments, and some are threatening to walk as a large group into the river with their children this weekend if this policy isn’t changed.
One asylum seeker we spoke to is named Adriana. Adriana fled Venezuela after being persecuted by the current regime with her mother and two children aged 12 and 13, and their family has been waiting in Matamoros to seek asylum in the U.S. since November 2022. They downloaded the CBP One App to request an exemption to Title 42, but each time that Adriana and her mother went to make an appointment, they could not find five appointment slots available on the same day. On February 1, Adriana and her mother decided to make individual appointments and ask the CBP officials if their children would be able to enter without securing their own appointments. CBP officials verbally confirmed to Adriana that since her children are minors they would be able to enter “attached” to her individual appointment, so they were looking forward to their appointment on February 15 with much hope.
Yesterday, on February 15, Adriana went to her appointment on the bridge that connects Matamoros to Brownsville with her mother and children, when they were informed that the policy had been changed and each family member present needed an appointment to enter. She was told she had to decide, on the spot, between seeking asylum or separating from her family and leaving her underage children alone in Mexico. Desperate, she did the only thing she knew to do: give up her appointment and chance at asylum and stay in Mexico with her children.
“I was desperate to not leave my children alone in a country as dangerous as Mexico. The border officials just said that I was wasting their time.”
Adriana is now feeling desperate, sad, and very scared. She’s afraid for her life and for the lives of her children in Mexico. She has no idea when she’ll be able to secure an appointment in the CBP One app for her entire family. Her saga has no end in site.
These policies are killing people and we must ACT NOW.
Help us flood the comment lines at both DHS and CBP. Call and tell them to change this dangerous and impossible policy of forcing all members of a family to secure a separate appointment and to instead KEEP FAMILIES TOGETHER.
Lastly, please consider supporting Project Corazon so we can continue helping vulnerable asylum seekers at the border. Every dollar helps.
Thank you for your commitment to justice. We will keep you posted on this situation.
In solidarity,
Traci
Traci Feit Love
Founder and Executive Director
Lawyers for Good Government (L4GG)