legal TEAM

OUR WORK

BAJI’s legal team leverages direct legal representation, impact litigation, and legal training to combat the criminalization and deportation of Black immigrants, provide critical assistance to Black immigrant communities, and fight against anti-Black immigration systems. 

Mission

BAJI’s legal team leverages direct legal representation, impact litigation, and legal training to combat the criminalization and deportation of Black immigrants, provide critical assistance to Black immigrant communities, and fight against anti-Black immigration systems. 

Vision

BAJI’s legal team works to combat the structural racism in the nation’s immigration system and promote an environment that is fair, humane, and prioritizes the civil and human rights of Black immigrants and asylum seekers. We implement direct immigration legal representation and impact litigation as one of the most effective ways to challenge and change unjust, racist, and anti-Black immigration policies and practices in order to protect and liberate our community from detention and deportation. We want communities to become resourceful and have basic knowledge of their immigration rights. We provide culturally informed legal services.

Interested in volunteering with our team? Reach out to legal@baji.org. We are opento volunteers, interns, externs, fellows, and pro bono attorneys.

WHAT WE DO:

    • BAJI’s legal team provides technical support and oversight for the immigration programs at BAJI’s seven offices throughout the United States and supports advocacy on matters related to refugees and immigrants.

    • BAJI serves Black immigrants with resource provisions and referrals so that they can easily access available legal services. 

    • BAJI also supports Black immigrants in finding non-legal resources such as mental health care, social services, and other resources.

    • BAJI organizes quarterly Know Your Rights (KYR) workshops to increase awareness and knowledge of basic immigration rights among Black communities and other interested groups. BAJI’s KYRs are hosted virtually and in person in local community spaces. 

    • BAJI also collaborates with other Black immigrant-serving organizations to create and share workshops and other educational materials.

    • BAJI provides training to legal service providers across the country to remove barriers that prevent Black immigrants from accessing their services, such as language and other cultural barriers.

    • BAJI partners and collaborates with immigration rights organizations to hold the government accountable for structural racism in the immigration system and maximize litigation impacts. 

    • BAJI pushes federal government agencies to accurately and transparently collect race data through FOIA litigation.

    • BAJI submits amicus briefs to support litigation to dismantle policies that target Black communities.

Director of Legal Services
Tsion Gurmu

legal services

Challenges Facing Black Immigrants

Black immigrants face disproportionate racial discrimination and criminalization in the US legal system, increasing their vulnerability to detention and deportation. As a fast-growing demographic that remains marginalized, Black immigrants need culturally competent, multilingual legal services. BAJI provides such services to Black immigrants seeking legal

protection while informing broader organizing and policy efforts.

Eligibility for Legal Services

BAJI is expanding its immigration legal services for Black immigrants from African, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latinx, and other regions of the world where they identify themselves as Black. We currently provide legal services for Black immigrants in New York, NY, Los Angeles, CA, Oakland, CA, and Houston, TX.

We are working under limited capacity and will consider the urgency of each case accordingly.

EMAIL US TO SCHEDULE
AN INTAKE OR CONSULTATION

legal resources

You can find legal education materials on this page relevant to our work in the United States to support Black immigrants with different forms of immigration relief. You can search by keyword, language, topics, type, and date.

Our team will work to update this page as frequently as possible with current information. For any inquiries/questions related to these materials, please email legal@BAJI.org