As we reflect on another year filled with growth, challenges, and victories, we are grateful to our donors. Because of you, RAICES remains at the forefront of immigration, whether it’s reuniting families, providing direct legal representation to unaccompanied children, or welcoming refugees. Your gift made a huge difference for families and individuals seeking justice.

Last year, with your support, we fought against for-profit prisons for their role in family separation. As a part of our fight, we filed a lawsuit against GEO Group, the for-profit prison operator managing detention centers, for violating the court order preventing family separations.

We led a secret and coordinated effort to release immigrants in detention and reunite families for the holidays with #FallFreedomDay. RAICES Bond Squad worked with a group of other community bond funds to free a backlog of hundreds of people from detention. We posted $2.1 million in immigration bonds to secure freedom for these individuals and we did it all without alerting ICE beforehand to avoid a backlash on our efforts.

And we raised awareness about the horrors of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) forcing migrants to remain in dangerous conditions in Mexican border towns. With nowhere to go in Mexico, many people like Edwin and his daughter, Milagros, are living in makeshift refugee camps in squalid conditions with virtually no support from the U.S. or Mexican governments and only sporadic volunteer-driven medical care.

These examples are just scratching the surface of everything that happened in our world in 2019. We are grateful for you staying with us through it all. Your gift in 2019 was a revolutionary act of defiance and resistance.

Already 2020 promises to be another transformative year. With big elections looming, the Trump administration won’t stop making life more difficult for our immigrant and refugee brothers and sisters. But, with caring supporters like you by our side, we continue to fight for the rights of everyone seeking a better life in this country.

Thank you for your ongoing support and for being with us every step of the way.

While we have discontinued Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s Angels Unawares program for lack of sustained interest among our readers, you may become an individual donor by clicking here for the link.

Jonathan D. Ryan is the CEO at RAICES.

Orthodoxy in Dialogue seeks to promote the free exchange of ideas by offering a wide range of perspectives on an unlimited variety of topics. Our decision to publish implies neither our agreement nor disagreement with an author, in whole or in part.

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