With deep commitment to those facing the greatest challenges with the fewest resources in immigrant communities, we have a leading voice in big coalitions and campaigns to ensure we collectively advocate for people most often left behind in legislative and administrative policy.
End SIJS Backlog Coalition
The End SIJS Backlog Coalition is a national group of directly impacted youth and over 100 allied advocacy organizations working together to educate Congress, relevant administrative agencies and the public about the harmful impacts of visa caps on vulnerable immigrant children, and to advocate for an end to the Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) backlog. We aim to center the voices and experiences of SIJS backlog impacted youth, whose stories are the heartbeat of our work and best illustrate how ending the backlog can restore the purpose of the statute — realizing permanent legal protection in the United States for immigrant children who have survived abuse, abandonment and neglect.
The Coalition was founded in 2021 and has been housed at the National Immigration Project since 2023. The Coalition’s strategy, defined by a Steering Committee of experts and a Youth Leadership Council, is implemented through its various working groups. Since its founding, the Coalition has achieved major policy wins including the creation of USCIS’s deferred action policy for SIJS youth, publication of two reports documenting the harms of the SIJS backlog featuring stories from impacted youth and data obtained through FOIA litigation, the introduction of stand-alone legislation addressing the SIJS backlog in the House and Senate as well as via amendments integrated into Appropriations bills, and Congressional directives that resulted in the publication of quarterly data on SIJS adjudications.
As SIJS youth face new threats, including the termination of the SIJS Deferred Action Policy, we fight to defend the rights of SIJS youth seeking permanent protection in the United States. We are urgently mobilizing to safeguard the limited protections SIJS youth have, to help SIJS youth understand their rights and empower them to organize, to free SIJS youth from detention and to equip the legal community with the tools they need to stand alongside them. At the same time, we continue to push for a lasting solution to the SIJS backlog, so that SIJS youth have the protection they deserve.
Habeas Project
The National Immigration Project’s Habeas Project connects unlawfully detained immigrants to pro bono legal representation to seek release through habeas corpus petitions. Working with local partners in priority regions, the project facilitates rapid case placement with trusted attorneys and provides training, mentorship, and resources to the attorneys who take on those cases.
The Habeas Project currently operates three regional projects: the DMV Habeas Project, in partnership with Amica Center; the Southeast Habeas Project, focused on Louisiana, Mississippi, and the Gulf Coast, in partnership with ISLA; and the Minnesota Habeas Project, in partnership with the Binger Center for New Americans. Attorneys who want to volunteer and advocates with eligible cases can connect with the relevant regional project through our referral and volunteer forms.