Expanding representation for immigrant youth

Immigrant and Refugee Support

County of Los Angeles

Expand existing project, program, or initiative

AOL staff are national leaders and experts in the field of immigration law. AOL was founded in 2015 and has provided pro-bono legal services to indigent immigrants and refugees since then. AOL's staff have years of experience screening immigrant youth for legal representation in SIJ and Asylum proceedings. AOL currently represents 15 unaccompanied minors in SIJ cases and even more in Asylum proceedings. Our program's success rate reflects our expertise and the high quality of our work. AOL staff are not only experts on the legal complexities of navigating immigration matters for immigrant youth, but also have decades of combined experience connecting them with non-legal resources to ensure holistic, humane case management.

AOL currently represents immigrant youth in their legal proceedings through a grant from the California Department of Social Services. Minors who have survived abuse, abandonment, or neglect at the hands of one or both of their parents in their countries of origin may come to the United States to seek permanency here under the Special Immigration Juvenile, or SIJ, status. Immigrant youth who have personally survived persecution or have been impacted by the persecution of family members may seek Asylum in the United States. AOL wants to expand this critically needed representation for immigrant youth. Our current capacity allows us to reach a much smaller population than we would like to represent, and the need for SIJ and immigrant youth Asylum representation in Los Angeles is great. Accordingly, this grant funding would allow us to more than double our current legal representation capacity for immigration youth in SIJ and Asylum proceedings.

Immigrant youth face some of the most significant obstacles to obtaining legal status in the United States: for one, they are expected to pursue their immigration cases without the benefit of appointed representation. That's right--indigent immigrant youth are not appointed counsel. We have seen toddlers appearing before immigration courts alone, expected to present their complex immigration case before a hostile court. Additionally, many immigrant youth are not fluent in English and lack robust support. Given Los Angeles county's proximity to the United States-Mexico border and numerous immigration detention centers, it is a place where many immigrant youth and their families go to begin their lives in the United States after bravely crossing the border fleeing abandonment, abuse, neglect, and/or persecution. Expanding our legal representation program will ensure that Los Angeles county is a more humane, dignified place for particularly vulnerable immigrant youth to live safely.

AOL has the capacity to track qualitative and quantitative measures of success and impact. Quantitative measures employed are tracking the completion of intakes, case filings, case outcomes, social services support, and case management progress points as defined by internal metrics. AOL tracks demographic data, application type, and other metrics as required. Qualitatively, we consider legal services a formalized form of storytelling, and we build our collective knowledge through sharing our observations, the experiences we hear from clients and their families and communities, and other narratives that inform our process and outcomes. Evidence that our efforts are working are the case outcomes that directly impact immigrant youth's legal paths to permanently stay in the United States. Since we began representing immigrant youth we have won numerous SIJ orders and obtained several grants of Asylum. Our goal is to drastically increase these numbers with expanded, dedicated capacity.