Pennsylvania Immigration

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Pennsylvania Immigration Law Foundation

 The American Immigration Law Foundation (AILF) is a non-profit organization founded in 1987 to increase public understanding of immigration law and policy, to promote public service and professional excellence in the immigration law field, and to advance fundamental fairness, due process, and basic constitutional and human rights in immigration law and administration. The AILF Legal Action Center is the litigation arm of the Foundation. Part of the Legal Action Center’s work involves providing mentoring assistance and advice to immigration lawyers on wide-ranging immigration law issues including removal and detention. The Pennsylvania Immigration Resource Center (PIRC) is a nonprofit, legal services organization founded in 1996 as a legal and educational resource center for immigrants in Bu-reau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. PIRC’s goal is to ensure access to justice for detained immi-grants who face removal from the United States. To that end, PIRC delivers presentations, conducts pro se workshops, and provides individualized legal assistance to the detainee popu-lations in Pennsylvania prisons. PIRC focuses its efforts on providing legal representation to particularly vulnerable im-migrant populations, those populations that are typically un-able to mount a successful defense against removal from the United States without representation. These populations in-clude children, families, survivors of torture, survivors of domestic violence, and individuals with mental health con-cerns. In addition, PIRC provides legal assistance to detain-ees challenging their continued custody. Such challenges are frequently based on failures to receive requisite custody re-views or because release is constitutionally mandated. The Midwest Immigrant and Human Rights Center (MIHRC), a program of Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights, provides direct legal services to and advocates for impoverished immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. MIHRC, formerly known as Travelers and
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Immigrants Aid, has worked with and represented low-income immigrants since 1881, including immigrants and asylum-seekers like Mr. Benitez, who are detained by the United States Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforce-ment (formerly the Immigration and Naturalization Service) because they cannot be removed from the country. MIHRC conducts legal rights presentations and individual legal con-sultations in various county jails throughout Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, and litigates on behalf of immigrants in im-migration courts and the federal courts, often in conjunction with local lawyers working pro bono publico. Through di-rect legal services and advocacy, MIHRC strives to advance local and international human rights and protections for im-migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, including the right to be free from arbitrary or unreasonable detention. Since 1998, the Office of the Federal Defender for the Eastern District of California has been appointed to represent hundreds of individuals detained by the Bureau of Immigra-tions and Customs Enforcement in federal habeas corpus cases challenging such detention. A substantial percentage of these individuals are persons deemed “inadmissible” or “excludable” by federal immigration officials who cannot be removed from the United States because their countries of birth will not accept them.

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