IMMIG STRIVING FOR JUSTIC
Access to Legal Assistance for Detained Asylum Seekers Feerick Center Immigrant Justice Project In the past two academic years, the Feerick Center Immigrant Justice Project (FCIJP or the Project) has focused its work on organizing service trips through Proyecto Dilley (formerly known as the Dilley Pro Bono Project)—until the pandemic forced suspension of all in-person programming and domestic and international travel. FCIJP has also engaged in extensive program innovation, fact finding and educational programs. FromMarch 2016 until March 2020, when the pandemic forced cessation of all travel-related programs, the center organized five to six service trips to the southern border of Texas each academic year. Center-led service trips brought teams of volunteers to serve through Proyecto Dilley at the South Texas Family Residential Center, the nation’s largest immigration detention center, which has held asylum-seeking women with children undergoing initial processing of their
asylum claims. Volunteers provided limited-scope legal assistance by helping clients in expedited and reinstatement of removal proceedings to prepare for interviews with asylum officers. Volunteers also assisted with appealing negative determinations by the Asylum Office. These week-long service trips were extremely grueling and exhausting for volunteers, who often served severely traumatized women and children fleeing persecution from all over the world—but especially from the Northern Triangle of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) and Mexico. The Feerick Center partnered with Fordham Law’s student group—the Immigration Advocacy Project or IAP—to organize student service trips.
38 | Feerick Center for Social Justice Biennial Report 2018–2020
Made with FlippingBook Proposal Creator