BAJI trains community paralegals to develop the necessary cultural competence, technical skills, and experience to be approved for accreditation by the Department of Justice (DOJ). As part of BAJI’s ongoing leadership development work, it has found new ways to support community members who were legal professionals in their home countries and express interest in becoming immigration advocates in the United States. These community members often either have firsthand experience with the immigration system in the United States or have family, friends, and community members who have experienced the barriers and challenges inherent in this system. BAJI brings such community members on as community paralegals and prepares them to become partially and fully Department of Justice (DOJ) accredited representatives. 

BAJI continues to provide training and support to Black attorneys and law students interested in supporting BAJI’s legal work while developing its accredited representative program and opening spaces in the legal ecosystem for Black people to engage directly in legal work.

CLINIC trains and supports non-lawyers to become partial and fully accredited representatives, to advocate for people in immigration court and/or before the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Often, immigrants in the United States lack access to the legal, emotional, and social support they need to navigate the immigration system. Due to the limited number of competent low cost and pro bono attorneys available, thousands of immigrants go without any legal assistance. Further, those who attain an attorney may be limited to a client-service provider relationship. CLINIC’s program thus targets those already working within immigrant communities, and provides trainings and webinars for advocates to become accredited representatives.

Many of these representatives come from affected communities and possess a deep understanding of local needs, context, and culture. The legal profession may not advocate for client empowerment, for skills and knowledge to transfer to clients so that they can make educated decisions about their lives. Attorneys do not always hail from the communities they represent, and language and cultural barriers may limit client empowerment. By contrast, CLINIC provides continued support and mentoring to the representatives––an essential resource in navigating the complex and ever-changing immigration law landscape.

Centro de Trabajadores Unidos (CTU) has a strong community navigator program. To address the challenges Chicago immigrants face, the city created a large-scale Community Navigator Program that will allow families to access deportation protection education and legal defense in ways that are integrated with other holistic programs and services. The Community Navigator Program functions as a community-based legal defense strategy that in effect takes legal support directly into Chicago communities that have high concentrations of foreign-born households. Community Navigators provide invaluable outreach, education, document preparation, and naturalization assistance to Chicago’s many ethnic communities.

CTU organizes a local Immigration Community Navigator Committee to educate and train community members as promotores or navigators from the southeast side and south suburbs of Chicago who can organize around urgent immigration needs and act as general resources for the community. CTU does frequent outreach to invite community members to new member orientations, through community engagement or through its other departments. At these new member orientations, CTU staff present its goals, history, projects, and begin training members on their rights and how to do advocacy. Community navigators attend the orientation and then agree to become navigators. 

Immigrant Justice Corps (IJC), with its two fellowships, was created in response to the mishandled immigration cases Judge Katzman saw when he was a Second Circuit Judge. With more skilled and passionate advocates, who do not have to be lawyers, more immigrants have access to adequate counsel. Community Fellows specifically are recent college graduates who are trained and can qualify as partially accredited representatives. IJC is resource-intensive to ensure that fellows eventually represent clients in court. They are placed in trusted community-based organizations and public libraries in New York City’s five boroughs. IJC strategically chooses locations that reduce barriers to entry and conveniently bring legal services to the community. 

Originally launched in 2018, Equity Corps of Oregon was created in response to the crisis of mass deportation and incarceration facing immigrant families. The goal of Equity Corps is universal representation for immigrants in Oregon. To achieve this goal, Innovation Law Lab trained 150 community navigators, working out of 57 community-based organizations throughout Oregon. Navigators receive training on screening legal immigration cases and use Innovation Law Lab’s online navigators portal to submit cases for further legal review by Equity Corp’s direct service attorneys.

Navigators submitted 464 navigations for review, 85% of which were eligible and accepted into the program. Achievement of universal representation in Oregon was bolstered by funding received from the state in 2019. Equity Corps is the first statewide universal representation program of its kind in the country with hundreds of immigrants receiving legal advice and support through the program.

Maria had been a caseworker for years, but when clients raised legal issues, she froze. That changed after she received training from Legal Link. One of her clients was facing over $70,000 in child support debt. Thanks to her training, Maria knew that this debt should not have accrued while the client was incarcerated, and worked to clear nearly all of the debt. As a result, her client got his driver’s license reinstated and obtained employment.

Laws like the one above can be incredibly impactful, but for the majority of people experiencing poverty, these legal protections are out of reach. The access to justice gap is profound: the U.S. has more lawyers per capita than any other country, yet 92% of low-income families do not get adequate help for their civil legal problems. By creating additional layers of help – akin to community health workers, nurses, and first responders in the medical context – we can strengthen our legal ecosystem. Frontline community justice workers can help low-income families to identify legal issues earlier, access legal protections sooner, and remove legal barriers faster.

NPNA supports community navigators, individuals who help people navigate systems, get referrals, and receive services. It started its community navigators program in 2012 to inform communities on how to prepare their Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of American (DAPA) applications. Community navigators (also known as natural helpers or promotoras) are community members, mostly immigrant women, who get involved in the immigrant rights movement. They do not provide legal advice. Rather, through “peer-to-peer support,” community navigators refer people to organizations, support navigating the system, and also share the trainings that NPNA holds for the community within their community networks. Community navigators also reach more people when they can share the data of immigrants in the community who can qualify or benefit from certain programs. They support the social needs that communities have. While accredited representatives (or lawyers) focus on a legal case such as an asylum application, community navigators fill in the gaps for a holistic approach to address immediate needs, focusing on housing, healthcare, school enrollment, transportation needs, and other social services communities might need. In this way, community members are better able to continue with their cases. 

Pangea specializes in deportation defense and community members are thoroughly involved in the process. Pangea strives to build a community-led deportation defense model that offers high-quality representation and an opportunity for clients to be agents of change. 

Pangea does not think people are disposable, and as an abolitionist organization, recognizes the value of working at the intersection of criminal law and immigration: crimmigration. Jesús Ruiz, an organizer at Pangea explains: “We have a criminal justice system that pushes people to deportation.” A lot of people are forced to take plea deals in the United States, especially in California. When people take plea deals, their attorneys frequently don’t tell them about immigration consequences. Pangea’s organizers or community paralegals support immigrants with convictions to get the convictions overturned so they can apply for some relief; and help clients get their green cards back and apply for citizenship. Pangea partners with Silicon Valley De-Bug, an organization that launched participatory defense in the United States. 

Through its affiliate organizations and members, UnidosUS uplifts different types of community paralegals who play valuable roles in the Latine community and are often members of the immigrant community. UnidosUS makes the case for low-cost high-quality immigration services, and advocates for funding streams for non-profit community-based immigration legal services. It has promotore/as de salud (health promoters) who educate their communities on health issues like diabetes prevention and debates on Medicaid. The Padres Comprometidos (committed parents) parent engagement program works with immigrant parents to teach them how to advocate for themselves and their children in schools. A decade ago, UnidosUS had 20 organizations in its affiliate network that were DOJ recognized and since then, the number has doubled. 

Regarding DOJ Recognition and Accreditation, UnidosUS works with organizations that want to provide community-based immigration legal services, but do not yet have the necessary requirements to achieve recognition from the U.S. Department of Justice. When affiliates express that they’re interested in starting a legal services program, UnidosUS connects them to others who are similarly situated, and provides technical assistance to support their applications for recognition. It undertakes peer exchanges, subgranting, and letters of support for DOJ recognition. UnidosUS collaborates with partners like CLINIC and NPNA to support its affiliates. UnidosUs subgrants and furnishes organizations with resources, and encourages its affiliates to join CLINIC’s network to receive substantive legal training and support. UnidosUS and CLINIC are working on documenting their partnership as a replicable model to showcase the value in utilizing existing resources instead of recreating the wheel. They are working together to highlight how accreditation allows people to practice law in an affordable and specialized way, without going to law school; and to underscore the benefits of accreditation which includes staff retention, staff investment in the organization, and staff professional growth. 

VIISTA is a three-module online certificate program that trains immigrant advocates to become Department of Justice accredited representatives. It is the first university-based program of its kind. From the beginning, VIISTA was developed in consultation with directly impacted communities. Consultations also included current accredited representatives and immigration judges. These experiences were integral to the development of the curriculum and informed the topics and skills taught in the program. 

VIISTA increases access to justice and lowers barriers for entry into immigration advocacy; the cost is significantly lower than a law degree and the entire 3-module program can be completed in 18 months. Its online nature makes it accessible to anyone with a computer and internet connection. 

The curriculum is holistic. VIISTA teaches immigration from various perspectives and includes all the topics needed to become effective immigrant advocates, such as interviewing, how to work with an interpreter, how to work with migrant children, factors that push people to migrate, provision of trauma-informed care, trial advocacy, and immigration law. The needs and agency of migrants and refugees are central to every part of the program.