How We Help

Immigration Law & Justice Network (ILJ Network) provides free or low-cost legal counsel, support services, and advocacy for immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers, without regard to race, religion, ethnicity, ideology, gender identity, or sexual orientation.

We work alongside immigrants so they can attain authorization to work and live with dignity, reunite with their families after years of separation, and escape horrific violence to find refuge here in the United States.

Because we recognize that every person needs—and deserves—to feel a sense of trust, welcome, and belonging, our clients represent different faiths, races, traditions, and educational and professional backgrounds—each of them reflecting the powerful diversity of our cities, towns, and communities.

Our Services

ILJ Network supports 19 locally operated sites that collectively serve over 5,000 low-income immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers each year. ILJ attorneys work with clients through referrals and scheduled appointments. We also currently host over 50 free or low-cost immigration legal clinics, most of them held in churches and other community settings.

Immigration Law & Justice sites also engage in education and advocacy. We conduct Know Your Rights and safety planning sessions for immigrant communities and give presentations at churches and other community sites to educate and inform local residents about our complicated and evolving immigration laws and policies.

ILJ Network serves as the backbone for all of our ILJ sites. We provide strategic support to immigration attorneys, volunteers, staff, and boards of directors to offer more effective immigration legal services to low-income immigrants. We also oversee the expansion of the network to welcome new sites in areas of high need. By working together with our sites, ILJ Network helps them provide expert immigration legal services and achieve a larger collective impact than they could ever realize on their own:

Ensuring consistent high-quality, effective immigration legal services across the network

We ensure excellence among ILJ sites with procedures to evaluate, monitor, measure achievements, and provide a mentoring program for staff attorneys. We hold sites accountable for providing excellent services through, among other things, a Memorandum of Understanding. We offer hands-on assistance to start-up sites, including in-person visits from ILJ Network staff, working with them to develop leadership, raise funds, and implement compassionate and successful legal programs and clinics.
We facilitate exceptional legal services through attorney mentorship, trainings, and frequent communications on the issues of governance, programming, and fundraising. This helps ILJ sites implement best practices in all facets of their work.

We foster opportunities for staff, board members, and volunteers to learn from one another and share ideas through in-person gatherings, attorney calls, listservs, and an internal website with hundreds of documents for shared use. As a result, our staff becomes more knowledgeable and effective in carrying out their mission of providing life-changing immigration legal services.

Brokering national resources for local support

We provide financial support that focuses on sustainability and resource-sharing through opportunities such as matching grants and innovation funds. Sustainable sites are key to ensuring that clients are continuously represented until a positive outcome is achieved.

We reduce overhead expenses of local sites by covering critical items such as malpractice insurance, case management systems, research databases, and memberships in the immigration field and nonprofit community. This allows sites to focus their resources on serving clients.

Increasing public awareness of immigrant needs and services to address those needs

We promote the Immigration Law & Justice brand through communications that tell the stories of our clients and our work on their behalf. This enables sites to grow and helps potential clients become aware of the services available to them.

We advocate for immigrant rights and immigration reform using our collective voices from across the country, representing the hopes, struggles, and experiences of our many and diverse immigrant clients. This fosters more widespread advances for the immigrant community that cannot be achieved through direct services alone.

Case Types

ILJ Network’s staff attorneys and teams of volunteers provide in-depth immigration legal assistance to low-income immigrants and their families. Our most common case types include:

Advice and Counsel

Asylum

Citizenship

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)

Deportation Defense

Family Petition

Refugee Adjustment of Status

SIJ (Special Immigrant Juvenile Status)

U Visa

VAWA (Violence Against Women Act)

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Key Pages

National Headquarters

Immigration Law & Justice Network is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Our tax identification number is 45-4044201. Contributions may be tax deductible.

United Methodist Church Advance #901285.

We are members of AILA (American Immigration Lawyers Association), CLINIC (Catholic Immigration Legal Network), and NIPNLG (National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild.)