Immigration Legal Fee for Leslie's Children

I am raising money to cover immigration legal fees for my dear friend's two oldest children (17 and 14). She arrived to the US in 2016 when they were 9 and 6 seeking protection from violence in her home country.

She has paid $15,000 in legal fees over the last eight years while a decision remains pending on their asylum case.

Her children are also eligible for another form of legal relief, the Special Immigrant Juvenile Visa, and the cost is $16,000 for the attorney to file for both children. This is a staggering amount for her. It is not safe for them to return to their home country and the stress and fear of deportation is taking a toll on them emotionally. The children have resided here more than half their lives.

After filing for asylum my friend was granted a work permit and for the last six years has dedicated herself to working in a non-profit food pantry and community day program. During Covid she was instrumental in the organizations efforts to provide more than 100,000 of food a year to families in northeast Baltimore.

As a single mother she works full time at the non-profit and drives uber every evening and all day Saturday and Sunday (9am to midnight) to make ends meet and keep up with the legal fees.

She has faced a lot of hardship and rarely complains. Her children are resilient but miss and need their mother who rarely has a day off to spend time with them. Tonight she confided "I am so tired". Let's not let her face this next hurdle alone.

Working in the immigration space I often hear people say that immigrants should "come the right way". The US law allows people like my friend that have been persecuted to seek asylum. Her children are also eligible for a Juvenile Visa but legal fees and the time that cases take to be resolved due to backlogs in our immigration system force people to incur years of legal fees.

Our goal is to cover as much of this fee as possible but we need at least $5,000 for the initial deposit for the attorney to start the children's cases.

I will make the payment with the money raised and share a receipt and updates here.

*information and photos shared with the families permission.