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Contact NIJC Communications Director Tara Tidwell Cullen at (312) 833-2967 or by email.

A year after thousands of children arrived in the United States fleeing a surge of violence in Central America, legal aid providers and pro bono attorneys have convened in Chicago this week for a three-day summit  to strategize best practices to help those children navigate the complex and broken U.S. immigration system.
 

 

During the summit, hosted by Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) and sponsored by JPMorgan Chase & Co., about 25 attorneys and human rights advocates will share strategies and develop models to help children understand their rights and pursue legal protections. The summit focuses on reaching an estimated 57,000 unaccompanied immigrant children who fled gang- and gender-based persecution Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, and who have passed preliminary screenings to show they may be eligible for protection under U.S. law. Many of the children now are reunited with family members, often in rural areas far from legal counsel.
 
The best practices and strategies developed at the summit will be published as part of a manual, scheduled to be distributed nationally in late 2015, which will help build legal services capacity and encourage greater consistency among the work immigrant and children’s rights advocates and pro bono attorneys do to help children fleeing persecution.
 
“The majority of the children who arrived last year remain at risk of deportation to places where they face persecution, and they desperately need attorneys to navigate a complex legal system that most adults struggle to understand,” said Lisa Koop, associate director of legal services at NIJC’s Indiana office. “Although the number of children fleeing to the United States has largely abated, the dangers in Central America that drove their migration persist.”
 
Convening participants, experts on U.S. immigration law and issues facing children who flee violence, are available for media interviews. To arrange an interview contact NIJC’s Director of Communications Tara Tidwell Cullen.
 
Participants provided the following insights:
 
Lenni Benson, director of the Safe Passage Project at New York Law School: “The day-to-day logistics of representing unaccompanied children on this scale is complicated even for organizations that have done this work for decades. We’ll have some of the country’s top immigration experts working together to improve how we work, including creating best practices for how to communicate with children and their families throughout the process and to help them play an active role in their cases.”
 
Rocio Castañeda, supervising attorney at the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, Arizona: “The more immediately we connect children with information about their rights and give them some understanding of what they’re up against in the immigration system, the more likely they will be down the line to find legal counsel once they’ve reunited with their families and are faced with appearing in immigration court.”
 
Alexandra Fung, managing attorney of NIJC’s Immigrant Children’s Protection Project, Chicago: “Many of the children are eligible for asylum and other forms of protection provided by U.S. laws, but those happen to be some of the most complicated areas of immigration law. Children who have the best chance at securing safety will be those who have lawyers who understand the laws and develop sound legal strategies. We really need to ensure there are lawyers with the capacity to do that in the areas where these kids are now living.”
 
Angela Vigil, director of pro bono and community service at Baker & McKenzie, Miami: “Most of the nonprofit organizations providing legal assistance simply do not have the resources to reach all the children who need help. Expanding the capacity of the private bar to provide pro bono representation is critical, and so is engaging foundations and other donors to invest in getting these children the legal assistance they need.”