Providing Free Legal Representation for Immigrants with the Long Beach Justice Fund
Long Beach, CALong Beach, California allocated $300,000 of its $136 million ARPA recovery funds to expand the Long Beach Justice Fund, a program developed in 2019 that provides free legal representation to low-income immigrants facing deportation. The additional funding will allow the City’s legal services partner, Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), to provide additional preventive services such as helping immigrants complete asylee applications. Tony Viramontes, Equity and Community Engagement Program Specialist at the City of Long Beach, says that the program aligns with their equity goal “to improve health and wellness in the city by eliminating social and economic disparities in the communities most impacted by racism.”
Why this investment?
In Long Beach, four out of every five immigrants have to fight their case alone without proper legal assistance, and struggle to defend themselves despite having valid legal reasons to reside in the United States. To address this lack of legal representation, the City of Long Beach partnered with the Vera Institute of Justice in 2019 to launch the Long Beach Justice Fund, a program providing free legal representation to low-income, at-risk immigrants working and living in Long Beach. The legal services are provided by Immigrant Defenders Law Center—Southern California's largest nonprofit deportation defense organization. ImmDef works with local organizations to identify individuals in need of services.
The Long Beach Justice Fund was selected as an ARPA investment, in part, because of its alignment with the City of Long Beach’s Framework for Reconciliation. Initially adopted in 2020 as a response to public outcries for systemic change after the killing of George Floyd, this framework seeks to address racism as a public health crisis, restore public trust in City government, and reconcile the gap in the experiences of marginalized people with City policies. Viramontes explains that part of the decision making process that led to the continued funding of the Justice Fund with ARPA dollars stemmed from community listening sessions in 2020, which resulted in the development of 21 specific City goals, one of those being the elimination of social and economic disparities.
What is this investment?
The program is carried out by ImmDef, a woman owned and led, bilingual organization with 86 percent Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) on staff. Many of ImmDef’s staff members are immigrants themselves, or the children or grandchildren of immigrants from Mexico and Central America. ImmDef works with local community organizations, such as the Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition, to identify immigrants in the Long Beach community that need legal assistance. Devin Chatterton is the Directing Attorney of the Community Defense Project at ImmDef and explains that the goal of the program is “to have as many people who live or work in Long Beach to be represented in their immigration hearing.” ImmDef additionally offers clients further access to wraparound services that are not part of ARPA funding, such as help with asylum applications, finding employment, housing, mental health services, food, health insurance, rent assistance, or, if detained, help finding organizations to pay their bond.
Centering equity in the program
The Justice Fund was selected as an ARPA investment based on its alignment with the City’s equity framework. Undocumented immigrants were disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 and face numerous structural inequities in accessing secure, sustainable livelihoods. While ImmDef provides services to all detained people, Chatterton notes that there is an intersection between the detained population and race in addition to nativity and ethnicity. “A lot of the people that you see detained happen to have darker skin, that is what it is because of immigration law and policy,” Chatterton says.
The Long Beach Justice Fund and ImmDef strive to ensure equitable access to legal representation for immigrants in deportation proceedings within the Long Beach area, but the program has faced capacity challenges due to the outsized demand for services. Viramontes points out that “the need is greater in the community than what our legal service provider has capacity for.”
Another challenge that has begun to arise recently is the uptick in immigration from countries outside of Central and South America, particularly from West African countries such as Mauritania and Senegal. Where previously Spanish speakers could easily communicate with immigrants at the border, there are now many immigrants who speak a variety of languages, creating an evolving challenge for service providers in Long Beach, who have traditionally been tailored towards Spanish speaking immigrants. “[We’re] trying to do a little bit more to reach out to these people, because I'm worried that they're not going to naturally come into contact with these community connectors,” Chatterton says. “I don't know if they are going to go to city hall or inquire as to what's available. I think they have other bigger fish to fry in terms of housing, employment, and safety.”
Outcomes to date
In immigration court the success isn’t always linear and the situation isn’t always win or lose, despite how the case is judged. Both the City of Long Beach and ImmDef understand this and share a vision of success that prioritizes the lived experience of their clients. Chatterton explains that, "Our success is whether someone gets out of detention… even if at the end of the day, their case doesn't win… I'm happy that they didn't have to spend that time in detention, and they were able to be with their family." The City echoes this sentiment and emphasizes the positive impacts that come from the program. Viramontes says, “We understand that when individuals have a need for legal representation, removal defense representation, there are most likely several other needs that aren't being met. So we asked our partners to also track down what other areas of need are being identified or where are they being linked to to receive these services? To us, I think that's successful as well.”
In terms of hard numbers, the Vera Institute tracked outcomes for the program between 2019 and 2021. From the beginning of the program in May 2019 to August 2022, the Justice Fund took on 52 total cases. During that time, they were able to help eight people get released from detention and close nine additional cases. In 2023 alone, however, the Long Beach Justice Fund and Immigrant Defenders Law Center took on 66 cases overall, including 16 child cases. When they first accepted the cases in 2023, six of the clients were detained in immigration centers, but, as of now, none of their clients remain detained. They have also helped obtain 13 work permits, get 15 client cases dismissed, and have gotten three of the child clients granted special immigrant juvenile status.
Toward transformative change
“Given how many people we have helped stay in the United States, whether that's with or without status, is huge, and I think the City definitely wants to continue that,” Chatterton says. Because of the success of the Justice Fund, the City has expanded services to assist with affirmative cases that are not in court, appellate removal defense, community outreach, and a Basic Needs Fund, which offers gift cards to clients referred to the program. This additional program will fill a gap that caused the Long Beach Justice Fund to reject over 120 cases due to clients not fitting into the deportation side of immigration court. As it stands now, ImmDef will not be the service provider for these cases, but will work with the City and the new organization that takes on this project to collaborate with clients who may have to cycle back and forth through the immigration process.