Protecting Immigrant Families

The Resurrection Project has powered city and state-wide campaigns with a broad network of partners to deliver increased access to high quality, low-cost legal services for immigrant families along with community education and outreach through our community navigator programs.

Illinois Access to Justice

Established in 2020, Illinois Access to Justice (A2J) is an Illinois statewide program that seeks to mitigate the devastating consequences of incarceration and family separation on vulnerable communities by:

  • Expanding effective and holistic community-based legal services

  • Providing opportunities for authentic local leadership of affected individuals, and

  • Sharing experience and best practices between partner organizations to increase capacity

Since 2020, the IL Access to Justice campaign has:

  • Conducted 24,353 Legal Screenings and Intakes

  • Accepted 17,787 cases for representation

  • Reached 674,947 individuals with legal education

  • Trained 816 community navigators

In the United States, we need a lawyer’s help for everything from disputing an eviction to defending criminal charges. Yet, legal assistance remains out of reach for the majority of us. We the people have more legal needs than there are services available to address them, and that gap is especially wide for Black and Latinx people, immigrants, residents of low-income communities and other historically marginalized groups. We’re all entitled to equal access to legal representation in the justice system. That access is critical to a more just society that ends poverty, combats discrimination and creates opportunity. The Illinois Access to Justice Program promotes equal access to legal representation by funding holistic legal assistance for Illinois’ vulnerable communities.

IL Access to Justice, a coalition of 84 community-centered organizations, provides holistic community-based legal services, including direct legal representation and legal education campaigns led by Community Navigators.

Defenders for All

The Defenders For All campaign is a coalition of immigrant leaders, community organizations, and legal service providers that support the creation of a fully funded immigration unit within the Cook County Public Defender’s Office (CCPD) to protect immigrants against deportation.

In 2019 alone, 1,476 immigrants (48% of all bond cases) were left without legal representation in their bond hearings at the Chicago immigration court and faced a greater risk of remaining separated from their families for many months. Unlike in the criminal justice system, there is no guarantee to a government-provided attorney in the U.S. immigration court system. Keeping immigrant families separated hurts our U.S. citizen children, our communities, and our economy.

We believe that all immigrants deserve equal protection under the law.

Because of the success of D4A, CCPD now has dedicated expert immigration attorneys available to provide comprehensive and holistic representation to their non-citizen clients. Due to the increased intertwining of our immigration laws and criminal laws, non-citizens in criminal court can face significant consequences if they are not advised properly by an attorney with immigration law experience. 

Chicago Legal Protection Fund

The Chicago Legal Protection Fund (LPF) is a citywide initiative supporting organizations that protect and empower immigrants in Chicago. The fund launched in January 2017 to advocate for the more than 180,000 immigrants and their families in Chicago following the 2016 presidential election. LPF continues to protect and strengthen the Chicago immigrant community through its collaborative model that links 11 community navigator organizations led by The Resurrection Project with legal counsel and expertise from the National Immigrant Justice Center.

Community Navigators and legal advocates have prevented hundreds of deportations, kept families together, connected the immigrant community to vital resources, facilitated personal and community growth through leadership development, and paved the way for many undocumented immigrants to adjust their status.

Since 2017, The Chicago Legal Protection Fund has: 

  • Trained 1,132 community navigators to provide education and resources to community members.

  • Educated over 338,000 individuals via 11 Community Navigator organizations to inform over 338,000 individuals of their rights and connect them to the National Immigrant Justice Center for free and trusted immigration legal services.

  • Provided expert immigration legal representation via National Immigrant Justice Center to Chicago residents in over 5,000 cases, boasting a 97% success rate, and more than 10,000 legal screenings.

Partner Organizations

  • Centro Romero

  • Centro de Trabajadores Unidos

  • Enlace Chicago

  • Erie Neighborhood House

  • Haitian American Museum of Chicago - HAMOC

  • HANA Center, Indo-American Center

  • National Immigrant Justice Center

  • Northwest Center

  • The Resurrection Project

  • Southwest Organizing Project - SWOP

  • United African Organization

Healthy Illinois

The Healthy Illinois Campaign works to make quality, affordable health care accessible to everyone in Illinois, regardless of immigration status. We believe health care is a basic human right. Increased access to care, timely preventative services and better management of chronic illnesses promote improved health outcomes and reduce costs of late health interventions.

The Healthy Illinois Campaign made history in 2020 when we passed legislation to establish healthcare coverage for low-income Illinois seniors ages 65+, regardless of immigration status. By establishing the Health Benefits for Immigrant Seniors (HBIS) program, Illinois became the first state in the country to ensure healthcare access for those shut out of federally funded Medicaid and Medicare programs. In 2021 and 2022, Healthy Illinois expanded health care access to low-income Illinois residents aged 42-64 through the Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults (HBIA) program. Since 2020, more than 70,000 Illinois immigrants have received health coverage through HBIA and HBIS.

Healthy Illinois Campaign continues to advocate to expand health coverage to the remaining Illinois residents still excluded.

Work Permits For All

The Work Permits for All Campaign demands access to work authorization for all immigrants. The U.S. is facing a workforce shortage and there are millions of undocumented people who do not currently qualify for work permits. The Biden Administration has broad authority to change this without congressional approval by granting parole, which then allows applications for work permits, to the 11 million long-term undocumented immigrants who need protection and the ability to earn a dignified living. From 2021-2023, the Biden Administration granted parole and work permits to more than 550,000 migrants. TPS and DACA extensions show that it is well within the Administration’s power to do so. The Work Permits for All Campaign calls on the Biden Administration to use the existing law to expand work permits through parole to all immigrants, including the undocumented! It’s time to grant parole and the opportunity to apply for a work permit for the undocumented immigrants who have spent decades working in the shadows in this country.

Because of Work Permits for All, the Biden-Harris Administration announced the creation of the Keeping Families Together program on June 18, 2024. The program allows spouses of U.S. Citizens who have lived in the U.S. for at least ten years to apply for parole and subsequent work authorization. Approximately 500,000 are estimated to be eligible. Attorney Generals from Republican states brought a lawsuit to halt the program and the program was struck down by a Trump-appointed judge, leaving families in limbo and denying access to safety and dignified work to hundreds of thousands of immigrants.

Partner Organizations

  • ABIC - American Business Immigration Coalition

  • Alianza Hispanoamericana

  • Aunt Martha’s

  • Binational Institute

  • Centro de Trabajadores Unidos

  • Centro Romero

  • Chicago Community & Workers Rights

  • Chicago Workers Collaborative

  • Children's Legal Center

  • COFI - Community Organizing and Family Issues

  • CWC - Chicago Workers Collaborative

  • Enlace Chicago

  • Erie Neighborhood House

  • Family Focus

  • Farmworkers and Landscapers Advocacy Project

  • Hispanic Federation

  • Illlinois Workers in Action

  • Indo-American Center

  • Instituto del Progreso Latino

  • La Casa Norte

  • Latino Policy Forum

  • LULAC

  • Metropolitan Family Services

  • Mujeres Latinas en Accion

  • North Suburban Legal Aid

  • Northwest Center

  • Palenque LSNA

  • Partners for Our Communities

  • Pilsen Neighbors Community Council

  • SEIU

  • Southwest Organizing Project

  • Spanish Community Center

  • The Resurrection Project

  • Warehouse Workers For Justice

  • Western Illinois Dreamers