Coalition Aims For ​“Immigrant Freedom”

Two years after first traveling from Guatemala to New Haven with little more than hope for better healthcare for her epileptic son, Lizeth Villalobos now has a work permit, a job, an apartment, and an ongoing asylum case.

She also has the support of a team of attorneys and case managers looking out for many local people in similar situations.

Villalobos and her 16-year-old son live on Columbus Avenue in the Hill.

They’re two of hundreds of undocumented immigrants across New Haven and Connecticut who have benefited from a nascent coalition of legal aid attorneys from New Haven Legal Assistance Association (NHLAA), case managers from Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services (IRIS), and law students from Yale Law School’s Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic (WIRAC).

That partnership is called the Connecticut Coalition for Immigrant Freedom (CCIF). It provides pro bono legal representation for clients facing deportation, applying for asylum, or detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). And it helps those same clients with a host of case management services, including support finding housing, paying rent, getting a job, and accessing food pantries and ESL programs and transportation and healthcare.

“This is true universal representation, merit blind,” NHLAA Director Alexis Smith told the Independent about the collaborative effort. ​“Regardless of what the circumstances are, we take the case. This program has been a lifeline for communities not able to afford an attorney. The need is so large.”

Smith said that, since first forming in the summer of 2019, CCIF has helped roughly 200 families in the state with legal representation, and roughly 400 families with case management.

Roughly two years later, IRIS Case Manager Camille Kritzman said during that same interview, the group is looking to grow.

By hiring more staff attorneys (in addition to the four legal aid lawyers currently assigned to immigration cases.) By hiring more case managers. By reaching more local undocumented immigrants in need of legal and social support.

That means stepped up fundraising, applying for grants from organizations like the Vera Institute for Justice, seeking out municipal and state financial support, and getting the word out to the public.

“We’re giving people a fighting chance if they’re detained here, if they’re working on an asylum case,” Kritzman said.

And, she stressed, the services provided — and needed — extend so much further than just lawyers representing clients in immigration court. They also include everything from finding a place to live to getting a job to enrolling children in school to knowing where the nearest food pantry is.

“Our goal,” Kritzman said, ​“is to help clients thrive.”

“I Feel Like I Can Ask For Help When I Need It”

During a recent interview at IRIS’s headquarters on Nicoll Street in the Goatville section of East Rock, Villalobos sat with Kritzman and this reporter to talk about the vital role that this legal aid-case management partnership has played in helping her build a sustainable life for herself and her son here in New Haven.

“There are a lot of different people from different counties who need support and don’t know where to turn,” the 34-year-old Guatemalan migrant said in Spanish, her words translated into English by Kritzman. ​“This organization treats people equally in their cases. It doesn’t treat people differently based on race or where they’re from” or why they came to the United States in the first place.

Villalobos said that she first ended up in New Haven in mid-2019. She and her then-14 year old son fled Guatemala for two primary reasons.

First, to seek out better healthcare for her son, whom Villalobos said suffers from a form of epilepsy. ​“My son was sick,” she said, and she was unhappy with the quality of healthcare he received in their home country. She hoped to find a better doctor for her son in the United States.

The second reason they traveled north from Guatemala through Mexico to the U.S. border was just as immediate as her son’s health. ​“We had been threatened before,” Villalobos said. ​“There is a lot of extortion and violence in Guatemala.”

After initially detaining her at the U.S.-Mexico border, Villalobos said, ICE released her and her son to travel to New Haven, where a friend of Villalobos had promised to serve as a sponsor while she applied for asylum.

Villalobos said that plan soon fell through after the friend told them they couldn’t actually live at her place. Villalobos and her son found themselves alone, cut off from the one person they knew in the city, living in a church and then couch surfing.

“I didn’t have a job. I didn’t know anybody. At the time, I was really afraid.”

What changed her life here in New Haven was when a friend she had met here recommended she reach out to IRIS to see if they could help her apply for asylum. She did. The IRIS-legal aid partnership assigned her an attorney, who ultimately helped her get a legal work permit and has shepherded her through her ongoing asylum case for well over a year.

“Since this organization has taken my case, I’ve never missed a meeting, never missed a court date” at Hartford’s immigration court, she said. ​“I couldn’t believe when they attorney agreed to take my case. I felt listened to. That’s all people want. They just want to be listened to.”

In addition to the legal support, Villalobos said, the legal aid-IRIS partnership helped her and her son find jobs cleaning school buildings for the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS). They helped her travel to doctor’s appointment after doctor’s appointment when she recently needed surgery for a broken foot. They helped her cover utility bills when she couldn’t afford to keep the lights on.

Her son, meanwhile, now has access to a doctor she trusts and medication that she said keeps him healthy and stable.

“I feel more confident. I feel like I can ask for help when I need it. The only thing I’m missing,” Villalobos said, ​“is to become an American.”

“I Survived”

While most of the work that CCIF does focuses on case management and asylum applications, Kritzman and Smith said, they’ve also taken on the work of helping free undocumented immigrants from ICE detention.

They’re doing that with the help of local community organizer and immigrant rights activist Vanesa Suarez.

Janal Gordon, a 27-year-old Jamaican immigrant who lives in Newhallville, said that he connected with Suarez and the CCIF group roughly two years ago when he was being held in ICE detention in Massachusetts.

He had traveled from Jamaica to Florida and then up to Connecticut when he was 22 years old to flee persecution of LGBTQ people in his home country, he said in a recent interview. While living in Bridgeport with his brother and aunt, he was picked up by ICE while at state court for an unrelated matter.

“It was a very devastating situation. I think I’m still traumatized,” he told the Independent over the phone.

While in ICE detention, a fellow cellmate recommended he reach out the Connecticut Bail Fund, which in turn was able to raise $5,000 to help him make bail.

That organization then helped connect him with New Haven Legal Assistance Association, which assigned him an attorney to help apply for asylum and get a legal work permit. Suarez, who previously worked for the bail fund and is now involved with the CCIF effort, has gone to nearly every immigration court hearing he’s had to show support, Gordon said. The CCIF group has also helped connect him with a therapist to work through the trauma of getting picked up and detained by ICE.

“I’m able to cope with it and understand that it is just a phase and just an experience, and I survived it,” Gordon said.

He now has a job working with Access Health CT as his asylum case continues to make its way through court.

“This is the first time where I’m not just fighting a deportation defense campaign,” Suarez told the Independent about her work with CCIF. Here, with helping people get out of detention, apply for asylum, find work and housing and mental healthcare, ​“I’m literally able to help connect people to what they need to live.”