Immigrant Families Together is excited to announce that we have completed our process of discernment about our 2022 focus, goals, and work. 

Partners and colleagues in immigration advocacy led us in this intensive process, informing us with their assessments about greatest unmet needs, as well as overlooked fronts where immigration enforcement and detention will be playing out in the coming year. We are grateful for their guidance, time, labor, and expertise in leading us through this period of discernment. 

After reflecting deeply on these conversations, we have arrived at the decision to make a bold commitment to the support of and justice for women and girls who will be imprisoned in a detention center for females that is opening in 2022 in Pennsylvania. 

This focus expands upon the detention support program that we launched at the end of 2019, and seeks to make a dramatic, tangible impact by supporting local attorneys and activists who have been engaged in the long-term, intersectional labor of challenging the systemic and structural abuses of immigration detention. 

What this means specifically is: 

• IFT is funding the full annual salary of a full-time immigration attorney to represent detained women and girls. This will be a part of a new program dedicated to women's defense, adding capacity to the existing capabilities of our colleagues at Aldea - The People's Justice Center. 

• IFT is funding the full annual salary of a full-time assistant who will support this attorney representing detained women and girls. This is also a new staff position.

• IFT will be guided by our colleagues at Aldea - The People's Justice Center to scale up a detention support program for the women and girls imprisoned at the Pennsylvania detention center. This program will include the consistent, adequate provision of hygiene products and food. Without this support,  detained women and girls would be all but required to participate in the detention facility's "volunteer" program, which pays ONE DOLLAR PER DAY for their labor. At that rate, a woman or girl would need to work A FULL WEEK or longer to buy just one small bottle of shampoo. 

• IFT will collaborate with Aldea - The People's Justice Center to disseminate  information that keeps supporters up-to-date about the detention of asylum- seeking women and girls, and to offer opportunities to engage in advocacy and activism around this urgent issue. 

In addition to these new commitments, we will continue to provide support to the families for whom we posted bond both during and after the 2018 zero tolerance policy that resulted in the separation of thousands of families. To date, we have paid 124 bonds, totaling more than $1.18 million. The majority of the families for whom we posted bond are now self-supporting and are proceeding through their asylum cases before the immgiration court, though we continue to cover legal, housing, and grocery costs for some families. In addition, the ESL program we launched in 2021 is going strong, having just launched Level 2, which students attend three nights per week. We continue to provide case management support and COVID relief services to families and to border partners, which include regular shipments of PPE and information and support for accessing and receiving vaccines. 

We are thrilled to invite you to join us in our existing and new efforts. As you plan your giving, we hope you will consider a contribution to our work, by making a tax-deductible donation to Immigrant Families Together. You can donate online through GoFundMe.  

https://www.gofundme.com/f/ift-general-fund

If you prefer to send a check, your donation can be made payable to Immigrant Families Together and mailed to: 

Immigrant Families Together

 c/o Julie Schwietert Collazo,

PO Box 7769, NY, NY 10116.