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Home My WebLink AboutConstituent Letter - Mail Packet - 2/23/2021 - Letters From Alianza Norco And Circ Re: Fort Collins Immigration Legal Defense Fund (Ldf) Dated February 18, 2021 And September 30, 2020Fort Collins City Council City Hall West, 300 LaPorte Ave. Fort Collins, CO 80521 February 18, 2021 Dear City Council Members and Staff, We are writing to follow up regarding budget allocation for a Fort Collins Immigration Legal Defense Fund (LDF). We want to thank you for requesting that your staff research this proposal, and gather data from our community organizations, in order to create a memorandum to best inform your decision on the matter in the coming city council meetings. As city staff wrap up their research and prepare to send you all a memorandum, we would like to send you the summary of our request and invite you to a Documentary Screening on Sunday March 7th from 2-4pm to hear impacted community members and their allies speak about the opportunity that this Legal Defense Fund presents for our city. As we hear about proposed changes to immigration benefits at the national level, we want communities like ours to be empowered and prepared with access to low-cost and pro-bono legal services. For too long, our hard-working immigrant community has been deprived of basic protections and has faced an immigration system without due process, justice, or fairness. The result has been family separation in Fort Collins, a lack of equity, and damage to our economy. Therefore, we the undersigned, ask you to create a Fort Collins Immigration Legal Defense Fund. This fund could meet a number of community needs including the following: 1. Legal representation to prevent family separation, which happens through detention and deportation and has devastating impacts on our families and our community. This can be achieved by funding a dedicated lawyer from the Rocky Mountain Immigration and Advocacy Network (RMIAN) and including additional professional support like Forensic Mental Health Assessments (FMHAs). 2. Legal representation for unaccompanied minors in the coming year, who have found refuge in Fort Collins and the Poudre School District. These youth are asylum seekers who cannot return to their country of origin due to threat of death. We can keep them safe through a process called Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS). 3.Legal representation and financial assistance with filing fees for affirmative cases such as DACA, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), Lawful Permanent Residency, and/or naturalization to become a US Citizen. 4.Funding a coordinator to be the contact person between the city, immigrants seeking legal representation, and the agencies doing this work. We look forward to continuing this conversation with you, and hope you will be able to join us on March 7 from 2-4pm for the Fort Collins LDF Documentary Screening! Please register here if you can make it. Sincerely, The organizations supporting this work: Patricia Miller, Alianza NORCO Joshua Stallings, The Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition Gloria Kat, The Family Center/La Familia Johanna Ulloa, BIPOC Alliance Gretchen Hailey, Foothills Unitarian Church Janina E. Fariñas, Ph.D., La Cocina Sarah Plastino, Rocky Mountain Immigration Advocacy Network Rev. Zachary Martinez, Community Dreamer Fund Megan Miller, Community Dreamer Fund Marguerite A Wagner, Community Dreamer Fund Amy Hoeven, Community Dreamer Fund Kathleen Schwader, Community Dreamer Natalie Fields, ISAAC of Northern Colorado Some of the community members supporting this work: Gayla Maxwell Martinez, 80526 Milena Vivas, 80524 Rutilio M. Martinez, 80526 Bertha Alicia Burciaga, 80524 Ticie Rhodes, 80525 Claudia Farfan-Loroño, 80525 Debbie Hayhow, 80535 Silvia Soler Gallego, 80521 Yenny Andreu, 80524 Cindy Conlin, 80526 Adele Lonas, 80526 Melita Quance Alyssa Esposito, 80526 Cassandra Otero Fort Collins City Council City Hall West, 300 LaPorte Ave. Fort Collins, CO 80521 September 30, 2020 Dear City of Fort Collins representatives, We write this proposal as trusted organizations in the immigrant community. In our work through Alianza NORCO, the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, and our collaboration with 92 other immigrant-led or immigrant serving organizations, we have determined that the most foundational missing resource for immigrants is low-cost or pro-bono immigration legal help. We encourage the city of Fort Collins to unequivocally pledge your support to our local immigrant communities by developing an initial $250,000 Legal Services Fund, which amounts to 0.035% of the total city budget for 2021. Following successful models around the country, including in Denver, the Fort Collins Legal Services Fund would empower qualified organizations to provide direct legal services to immigrants who are current residents of Fort Collins by: 1.Executing free community workshops for USCIS filings such as naturalization, legal permanent resident (LPR) and DACA renewals, that cost immigrants between $1,500 and $3,000 through traditional law firms 2.Expanding staff capacity and hiring attorneys to provide low-cost and pro-bono assistance with asylum, visa processing, and removal defense cases. Without non-profits doing this work, an individual would expect to pay anywhere between $6,000-$20,000 in legal fees. Our local economy and culture benefit from our immigrant community’s contribution: 11,236 residents in Fort Collins are foreign-born, 2,191 of them are eligible to naturalize and an estimated 2,310 are undocumented. In the greater Fort Collins Metropolitan Statistical Area there are 19,000 foreign born 1 residents. In 2017, immigrants in Colorado District 2 paid $172.4M in state and local taxes, and $406.4M in federal taxes. 15% of children in Fort Collins live with at least one immigrant parent, ¾ of these 2 children are U.S. citizens.1 In spite of their established lives in our communities, seventy percent of immigrants detained at the Aurora Detention Center face deportation without legal representation, yet the government trying to deport them always has a lawyer. While in detention, people face inhumane conditions, loss of liberty, 3 lasting trauma, and significant barriers to accessing legal assistance. Our immigration system is complicated and immigrants are 10.5 times more likely to be able to remain when they have legal 1 Fort Collins Immigration, July 2020 2 Fort Collins Immigrant Economic and Health Outlook, October 2020 3 Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC): “Details on Deportation Proceedings in Immigration Court,” accessed September 19, 2019, https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/nta/ representation. Many people in deportation proceedings have valid legal claims to remain in the US6, but 4 cannot argue their cases effectively without legal representation. 5 In August of 2020, 162 immigrant community members in Fort Collins responded to a poll distributed by Alianza NORCO. ~70% of those polled reported that they have needed the services of an immigration attorney but have not received them. 49% have not obtained immigration legal services due to the high cost of services. Other findings indicated that 36% do not know where to find legal services, possibly due to the fact that there are very few providers in Fort Collins, currently as low as one immigration lawyer. 6 We also saw the need to advocate for changed immigration policy as 39% indicated that they have not obtained legal services due to their legal status (their perception is that immigration laws do not allow it). We consider the existing lack of affordable legal services and representation to be the biggest barrier to successful integration for immigrants in Fort Collins. This gap creates significant challenges to our unauthorized and partially-documented immigrant community, including financial and emotional instability; lack of access to health care, stable housing, higher education and meaningful work; and a cycle of poverty that has far-reaching effects. In spite of these challenges, immigrants residing in Colorado are an integral part of our community, contributing 3.5 billion in federal taxes and 1.5 billion in state and local taxes. Our local culture is enriched by their traditions, and our local economy depends 7 heavily on their labor.2 The group of low-wage earners that we aim to serve power our hotels, restaurants, construction firms, dairies, horticultural farms, commodity and livestock producers.2 Providing them with access to affordable legal services should be a top priority for our city. According to the Vera Institute for Justice, “A common misperception is that deportation proceedings are only for unauthorized immigrants. In fact, any non-citizen—including lawful permanent residents (green card holders), refugees, and people who entered legally on visas can be placed in deportation proceedings.” We encourage the city to provide protection through universal representation to all non-citizens who are currently in deportation proceedings, and to prevent any others from this unfair process by increasing access to legal services. In the Resources below, we include additional guidance, a point of contact in Denver (which is already funding legal services), and videos that will give you additional background in 4 minutes or less! Please let us know what questions you or others in the city may have. Thank you for your interest in supporting our immigrant community. We look forward to continuing this conversation together! Patricia Miller, Executive Director, Alianza NORCO Joshua Stallings, North Regional Organizer, CIRC Janina Farinas, Executive Director, La Cocina Betty Aragón-Mitotes, Mujeres de Colores Araceli Newman and Sarah Zuehlsdorff, Co-directors, Mi Voz Program Gloria Kat, Executive Director, The Family Center/La Familia 4 Ingrid V. Eagly and Steven Shafer, “A National Study of Access to Counsel in Immigration Court,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 164, no. 1 5 Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), FY 2016 Statistics Yearbook (Falls Church, VA: EOIR, 2017), F1 and figure10, https://perma.cc/H2S8-Q4DT 6 There is an immigration attorney that works for CSU whose services are not included in this assessment. 7 “Take a Look: How Immigrants Drive the Economy in Colorado.” New American Economy, 27 Aug. 2020, www.newamericaneconomy.org/locations/colorado/ Community Members: Who we are: Alianza NORCO is a Fort Collins-based non-profit whose mission is to strengthen and empower our immigrant community and their families through key services, civic education, leadership development and community organization. Alianza NORCO is a member of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (CIRC). CIRC is a statewide coalition of more than 90 organizations - including immigrant, faith, labor, youth, community, business and ally organizations - founded in 2002 to improve the lives of immigrants and refugees by making Colorado a more welcoming, immigrant-friendly state. A working list of requests we receive from our immigrant community can be found here. In addition to funding a Fort Collins LDF, this list may give you an idea of how you can expand the mini-grants that you currently offer to include immigrants’ current needs. We have not given cost estimates to the COVID-19 related needs at the bottom of the spreadsheet. If you’re interested in funding these, please let us know and we can discuss what organizations are best equipped to provide these. Resources on Legal Defense: ●Vera on the importance of Universal Representation - 2min 40sec video ●Local Government Officials on the importance of Legal Defense and partnership with the Vera Institute - 4min video ●Profile of Foreign-Born Population in Denver & in Colorado ●Profile of Foreign-Born Population in the United States ●Check out this Google Drive Folder that we have assembled: Hilda Yanez Adriana Quintero Araceli Calderon Kelly Evans David Rout Debbie Hayhow Martha Giron Correa Serena Thomas Erin Bergquist Dr. Ryan Barone Ticie Rhodes Terry Rasmussen John W. Bisbee Carol A. Bisbee Jana Kraich Cristina Arellano Max Armendariz Silvia Soler Gallego Erika Saucedo Adela Gonzalez Yenny Andreu Susan Dunn Felicia Hirning Adrienne Birt Adele Lonas Felicia Hirning Kristen Draper Beth DeHaven Leta Behrens Sharon Petersen Nancy Camacho Sara Shaver ○“Urban Institute - Children of Immigrants” details many challenges our immigrant families face, and provide evidence that a Fort Collins Legal Services Fund would impact tens of thousands of legal resident and citizen family members in addition to the 3,800 estimated unauthorized immigrants in Northern Larimer County ○“Talking Points on Universal Representation” details the importance of establishing Legal Defense. It is also important to note that through the Vera Institute for Justice, we will have a web of support that we can lean on and learn from, including the staff at Vera, as well as the community leaders and city officials that make up the 18 SAFE communities in Vera’s nation-wide network. ○“CO Legal Defense Talking Points” details the importance of legal defense in our state ○“CO Fiscal Costs Due to Lack of Legal Defense” crunches some of the numbers for the statewide fiscal impact that a Legal Defense Fund would have in Colorado. Obviously, the numbers will not be as big when looking at Fort Collins. Nonetheless, Fort Collins plays an important role in the state. ○Information on Denver’s Immigrant Legal Services Fund can be referenced as a model ■“2018 Denver Immigrant Legal Services Fund Guidelines” explains the three categories of immigrant legal services funded in Denver & the guidelines for applicants to the fund ■“Denver Legal Defense Executive Order” contains the explicit language of Executive Order No. 142 in Denver ■“TDF Grant Report_DILSF_2019 Final Report” shares a report back on the results achieved through the Denver Immigrant Legal Services Fund ■“Grant Report Narrative_Sturm College of Law_Final_” shares additional information on the results achieved by the DU Law School with their portion of DILSF funding ■Lastly, Ben Martinez, Associate Program Officer of The Denver Foundation, who helps manage and administer funds has offered to lend his expertise to the City of Fort Collins as he is able. He can be reached by email at bmartinez@denverfoundation.org or by phone at 720-974-2618 (direct)