BAJI’s work is intentionally inclusive of the Black Diaspora, as its collective lived experiences and liberation are connected no matter anyone’s immigration status. While many rights movements silo criminal and immigrant justice systems, its research and experiences demonstrate that detention and deportation are a part of the U.S. carceral system that disproportionately impacts Black people at the border and in the United States.

BAJI organizers lead and co-create campaigns in their cities with community members and other community organizations.  

BAJI publishes reports on Black migrants informed by their lived experiences as well as quantitative and qualitative data. 

BAJI’s work at the U.S. Southern border demonstrates that global anti-Blackness impacts the migration of Black migrants across the world. Over the years, BAJI has regularly led legal workshops on U.S. asylum law, fact finding missions, and delegations to examine a diverse set of border-related issues in Mexico. While working in Mexico, it has seen firsthand the grueling experience of Black migrants at the border. Its reports There is a Target On Us and Externalizing Asylum highlight the ways in which governments implement anti-immigrant policies that criminalize Black migrants and block their migration from one country to the next.

Beyond Legal Aid implements “community activism lawyering,” which includes community-driven campaigns. As Co-Executive Director Lam Nguyen Ho explains, “legal aid has often operated as a band aid without getting to the systemic root causes of injustices. These injustices necessitate community activism.” Beyond Legal Aid strategically coordinates litigation with community action. At times, staff attorneys will wait to file a lawsuit until community partners have a mobilization strategy in place. Beyond Legal Aid pursues campaigns requested by community partners. For example, the organization collaborated with community partners to build a campaign to combat the racial profiling of Middle Eastern men and to protect seniors’ housing rights. Beyond Legal Aid stresses the importance of using multiple approaches to advance immigrant justice, and community-driven campaigns play an integral role in this work.

Grassroots Leadership’s goal is to empower people to be the center of their own campaigns for liberation. Historically, the United States immigration system has violated immigrant rights, as highlighted through recent injustices: a spike in the rate of arbitrary detention including children, thousands of family separations, the Remain in Mexico policy, the Title 42 border policy, the 60 day U.S.-Colombia-Panama campaign, and Immigration Parole Program for Migrants of certain nationalities. So through its members and coalition partners, Grassroots Leadership has engaged in a range of participatory campaigns to advance the rights of immigrant communities.

A signature campaign involves efforts to shut down the T. Don Hutto detention center, a for-profit detention center which incarcerates women asylum seekers. Following a number of successful public release campaigns involving detained women who were released due to egregious health and safety violations, community members realized they had the power to make change in federal detention policy. They developed a campaign directed at the Williamson County Commissioners Court to end its contracts with the for-profit prison company. On the day of the vote, more than 300 residents engaged in peaceful action––ranging from a Jericho walk to packing the Court building––to demand that the contracts be terminated. Grassroots Leadership believes that it was the power of community that caused the Commissioners to vote to end the contracts; an important step in the larger campaign to shut down the facility.

ÓRALE is an integral force in local, state, and national coalitions that are advancing intersectional, community-led movements for justice. All members working on community-led campaigns at ÓRALE must first graduate from Leadership Academy. The Academy not only politicizes people, it also introduces people to the power of storytelling and teaches them to tell their story in an authentic, non extractive way. ÓRALE’s campaigns include: 

• Health4All – The Health4All Campaign began in 2013 when immigrant rights activists, health care advocates, and community members came together to call for expanding health care to all Californians, regardless of immigration status. Undocumented immigrants are unfairly excluded from financial help for coverage through the ACA, and even from using a state marketplace like Covered California to purchase health coverage using their own money. And while many of the most populous California counties serve the undocumented through their safety-net, too many counties still do not. Yet undocumented Californians are a key part of our community and economy and should be included in our health system as well.

• Food4AAll – The Food4All campaign seeks to expand access to CalFresh to income-eligible California immigrants, regardless of age or immigration status. CalFresh stimulates and stabilizes the economy. CalFresh has been proven to reduce hunger, improve health, and mitigate poverty. Research shows that access to CalFresh improves overall health outcomes of Californians with low incomes and lowers health care costs over the long term. Between 2013 and 2017, participating in CalFresh kept 828,000 people out of poverty in California, including 418,000 children, per year.

OCAD builds policy campaigns around individual stories that highlight systemic forms of abuse within the immigration system. OCAD mobilizes immigrant communities to challenge policies and practices that oppress them. Immigration laws and policies are highly politicized and many people consider them racist and unjust. For example, OCAD launched a campaign in response to ICE detaining a grandmother following a traffic violation, despite the fact that she had been approved for, but was not yet in possession of, a U-visa. OCAD filed a lawsuit against ICE challenging the delayed issuance of U-visas. This lawsuit was one part of a broader community-driven campaign advocating for swift receipt of visas and the halt of deportation following menial traffic offenses. Litigation and immigration proceedings are often dependent on the underlying federal, state, and city laws, and when these laws are hostile to immigrant communities, collective action can help bring about change.

OCAD works within a coalition of other Chicago-based immigration organizations and Black-led community organizers. The coalition seeks to highlight the overlaps between how Black, brown, and immigrant communities are policed unjustly. OCAD also works with political actors like the Chicago Mayor’s Office, and actively refuses to compromise on key positions determined by the community. OCAD uses direct action to draw attention to their campaigns. OCAD members conduct rallies, banner drops, demonstrations at elected officials’ offices, marches, press conferences, online petitions, and create public art displays.

Guided by clients, Pangea leads campaigns to stop people from being detained or deported, usually in collaboration with faith communities and clients’ families. Pangea organizes with community members outside and inside detention centers. Pangea focuses on two types of campaigns: (1) individual public campaigns to stop someone’s deportation or release them from detention and (2) policy advocacy to shut down detention centers in California and win legal status for all undocumented immigrants. Pangea, its partner organizations, and its base have successfully shut down 3 centers in California. Jesús Ruiz, an organizer at Pangea, shares: “There’s so much that the law can do, but there’s also so much that the community can do.” 

Pangea is currently engaged in campaigns to shut down the 5 remaining privately owned detention centers in California. A bulk of Pangea’s organizing work is with people detained at 2 facilities in the Central Valley In 2023, the main focus was supporting detained individuals who organized a labor strike inside, and a hunger strike demanding release. Pangea is trying to improve conditions inside but its main goal is for detention centers to stop existing.

UndocuBlack responds to specific community needs within their network. For instance, its members lobbied for The Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness Program (LRIF) policy, which became law. Although the program has now lapsed, when it was passed, it was the first piece of legislation in 30 years that created a pathway to citizenship to any immigrant community. LRIF is still used as a blueprint for ongoing immigration legislative campaigns within the immigrants rights movement. 

Community members, specifically Liberian members, like elder “aunties and uncles,” led the advocacy work to pass this historic piece of legislation. Throughout the process of advocating for the legislation, UndocuBlack members advocated with elected officials on Capitol Hill. Once UndocuBlack members succeeded in passing the law, the focus switched to getting members to apply for the program. Some community members thought the law was too good to be true and did not believe it was real! UndocuBlack once again had to rely on its member leadership model and recruited UndocuBlack community leaders who were part of the initial advocacy process to get the law passed. These members organized and held information sessions to encourage their fellow Liberian community members to submit LRIF applications. Because the law passed during COVID, some community members could not apply because they had lost their jobs and couldn’t pay the fees, or did not have proper travel documents. UndocuBlack’s experienced community leaders continued the fight and this time went to USCIS meetings to report the reality on the ground. They requested fee waivers and flexibility on passport requirements. 

NSC viewed campaigns as necessary to realize their ultimate goal of rejecting––and changing––the injustices within the immigration system. NSC campaigns targeted a diverse set of actors. Some campaigns attempted to uplift immigrants, such as letter-writing campaigns to those in detention. Other campaigns targeted those who wield power within the system. NSC volunteers participated in phone call drives to ICE and government representatives with demands to release a Friend—the name given to an immigrant who sought services at NSC––or to protest a new policy.

NSC also organized weekly Jericho Walks around the New York Field Office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. NSC invited their citizen and non-citizen volunteers, as well Friends to participate in their campaign activities. The campaigns put pressure on actors within the system and raised public awareness of the injustices faced by immigrant communities.