CLINIC has brought community organizing, accompaniment, and movement building online through the creation of online Facebook groups for immigrants. These groups can bring emotional connection and solidarity when the immigration system separates families and communities. CLINIC currently maintains two Facebook groups: one for families that were separated by U.S. immigration policies and one for formerly detained women with children.

CLINIC manages publicity and security of the groups based on the needs of the community that they help to bring together. For the formerly detained mothers, the main goal of the group is to share resources and build a community of knowledge based on experiences. The group is kept private to help protect women and their families from further detention or from being tracked by abusive partners. The other group is publicly accessible so separated families can find lost loved ones and get reconnected to organizations and support networks.. With each model, the Facebook groups act as a space to practice community, solidarity, and information sharing.

From posting pro se tutorials on platforms like YouTube and partnering with rideshare apps like Lyft to physically connect immigrants and their attorneys, CLINIC is constantly innovating. Tech tools can be wielded with responsibility and used to empower immigrants.

Immigration Advocates Network develops digital tools that leverage modern technology to advance immigrants’ rights. One of their main projects is Immi, a website which empowers immigrants in the U.S. to understand their legal options and access critical resources. Immi includes a user-friendly, plain language “quiz” that connects people to resources specific to their individual needs.

Immi was created for pro se immigrants – those who navigate the immigration system without an attorney. It centers immigrants themselves with design updates based on user-testing and feedback. Through Immi, people can learn about types of immigration status, access a directory of over 1,000 non-profit legal organizations, stay up to date with changes to immigration law, and make a plan in case of an encounter with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Citizenshipworks is a platform which guides immigrants through the citizenship application. IAN also works with local organizations and advocates to hone their tools and platforms for specific communities. Iterated from Immi, Women Step Forward, was developed for the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) which focuses on the needs of immigrant women.

Tools developed by IAN are scalable to reach many people. Since 2016, Immi has helped over 180,000 people know their rights, identify a form of relief, make a plan, and connect with trusted legal assistance.

Innovation Law Lab merges coders, communities, and lawyers to create tools which open access to justice for immigrants. One such tool is Immigration Court Watch. This online tool offers a platform to record observations made in immigration court and compare them to observations made across the country. Volunteers are trained by Law Lab team members on the Immigration Court Watch tool – a platform which educates volunteers about the laws governing immigration court, the history of those laws, and the processes that they observe on a daily basis. It also encourages court observers across the country to share their expertise and knowledge with court watch teams in other jurisdictions.

Most people, regardless of political affiliation, agree that the immigration court system is harmful. Often, that claim is followed by speculation and scapegoating. Immigration Court Watch empowers communities to name the ways in which the system causes harm, and to hold immigration courts across the United States accountable to provide access to real justice. For decades, the fight to promote real justice in immigration courts has fallen on the most affected communities and a handful of fierce advocates and allies. Court Watch helps expand, coordinate, and disseminate the important observation work being done around the country.

A massive, militarized technological surveillance machine is being deployed against Black and Brown communities to supercharge arrests and deportations. Local, state, and federal law enforcement, as well as private companies, are rapidly expanding the use and scope of surveillance technology, including through the use of electronic monitoring via facial recognition and ankle shackles, leading to abusive criminalization and reducing privacy. The expansion of these surveillance systems has created massive profits for companies who contract with governments at all levels to push criminalization agendas. Meanwhile, federal policy makers are doing little to regulate this tech; they favor innovation over privacy and civil rights. Just Futures Laws aims to fill a gap of policy advocacy, research, and litigation that will energize and strengthen local and national campaigns combating harmful technologies deployed by local police, Department of Homeland Security, and corporations.  Specifically, Just Futures Law has an Eyes on Tech campaign to empower communities with the tools they need to fight back against invasive technology, and it files creative lawsuits against Tech Giants, applying novel theories using old case law in areas like tort and consumer protection law.

Justicia Lab’s various tech tools facilitate access to knowledge and legal services for immigrants while carving out the program’s leadership role in the ethical use of technology for legal movements. By acting as an advocate in the tech space, Justicia Lab can ensure that digital tools will be protective of the communities they serve. As Justicia Lab remains committed to building tools for people and not systems, its technology has proven capable of creating and amplifying the work of community-led networks, cohorts and partnerships. 

Projects include: 

• The Immigration Advocates Network (IAN), which harnesses the power of technology and collaboration to support immigrants and their allies; 
• Citizenshipworks, an online naturalization platform that makes applying for citizenship easy; 
• Immi, which helps immigrants understand their legal options and access critical resources from any location; 
• ImmigrationLawHelp, a national database of non-profit legal aid organizations; 
• ¡Reclamo!, an easy-to-use tool designed to help worker advocates retrieve stolen wages for workers; and
• Justicia Lab AI, the World’s First Non-Profit AI Lab for Immigrant Justice. 

VIISTA is an innovative certificate program that trains non-lawyers to become Department of Justice accredited representatives. It aims to democratize information and expand the ecosystem of people engaged in immigration justice.

VIISTA is hosted completely online and is thus accessible from anywhere in the world. Its format allows people to access the program at times that are convenient for their schedule and at a pace that fits well with their other obligations. VIISTA is set up in 3 modules. Completing the first 2 modules fulfills the requirements for partial accreditation from the Department of Justice and finishing all 3 modules prepares students for full accreditation. By establishing the program as separate modules, students have greater flexibility to learn only the information that they need for their desired accreditation level.

VIISTA continues to grow and innovate and aims to use the best available software and infrastructure to provide a seamless, effective program to get immigrant advocates accredited to defend the rights of their communities.