Legal Services & Community-Supported Deportation Defense

We provide direct legal services and engage in impact litigation in service of our mission. We integrate legal representation and advocacy to empower immigrant communities.

Legal Services

Free Migration Project provides immigration legal representation to low-income clients, with a focus on cases involving asylum, unaccompanied minors, DACA, family petitions, and victims of trafficking or domestic violence. We strive to integrate abolitionist principles into our legal work to achieve favorable outcomes for our clients. We believe that through community support and strategic lawyering, there is a path to freedom for every client.

To inquire about our legal services, please write us at [email protected] or call 646-441-0741. Please note that we do not accept walk-in appointments. We regret that we may not be able to represent all those in need of legal services due to capacity constraints.

Support for Stateless Community Leaders

Free Migration Project has built a collaborative relationship with United Stateless, an organization that advocates for the rights of stateless people in the U.S. We now represent two of United Stateless’s founding members in their immigration cases, Karina and Miliyon. Stateless people face unique challenges since they do not hold the citizenship of any country in the world.

Denis Calderon and Julio Maldonado are cousins born in Peru, who were raised in the U.S. since they were children. In 1996, when they were in their early 30’s, a mob of young white men attacked them as they walked to Denis’ neighborhood bar around the corner from his home in Northeast Philadelphia. The group first assaulted them with racist slurs, then with beer bottles, fists, and knives. When the police arrived at the scene, they zeroed in on Denis and Julio, the two non-white men, despite the fact that they were the ones surrounded by a hostile group.

Denis and Julio were unjustly charged and eventually wrongfully convicted of aggravated assault by a judge in a bench trial. Despite both men having longtime permanent resident status and Denis being married to an U.S. citizen, when they were wrongly convicted, their legal immigration status was revoked. After they had already served their prison sentence, Denis and Julio were sentenced once again to exile, and separation from their home and families through deportation. Along with Denis, Julio and their families, Free Migration Project continues to advocate for a fair and efficient clemency process for families facing separation by borders or prison walls.

Pardons Project

Free Migration Project partners with VietLead, a grassroots community organization serving the Southeast Asian community in Philadelphia, to help Cambodian and Vietnamese people who were deported due to harsh immigration penalties for criminal convictions return to their communities in the U.S. Through collaboration with peer organizations like VietLead, we have been able to tackle these complex cases creatively. We filed pardon applications for community members and are exploring options to prevent deportation for some at-risk people still in the U.S. Through this work, we are advocating for reforms to the system that punishes immigrants convicted of crimes twice: first through prison, and then again through deportations and exile.

#CarmelaLibre

Carmela Apolonio Hernández and her four children won their sanctuary victory in the spring of 2021 after ICE announced that she “is not a priority for enforcement.” Carmela and her children had been living in sanctuary in Philadelphia churches since 2017 under threat of imprisonment, deportation, and family separation by ICE.

Carmela and her children fled Mexico in 2015 after three close family members were killed by a drug cartel. Carmela applied for asylum, but her application was wrongfully denied. The family was targeted by ICE and threatened with deportation. This family's courage inspires us to keep working for a world where borders and immigration enforcement are a thing of the past.

As a result of a partnership between The Center on Immigration and the Free Migration Project, Cabrini’s immigrant students will now be able to get free legal consultations on various immigration status related questions.