Immigration Equality

Legal: Immigration Equality's legal program provides probono legal services and advocacy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (lgbtq) and hiv-positive immigrants and maintains a hotline that provides free, accurate legal advice about complex legal questions to thousands of callers annually. A team of nine experienced Immigration lawyers, paralegals, and 1 law clerk answer all hotline inquiries. Immigration Equality and its probono program directly represent hundreds of lgbtq and hiv-positive asylum seekers. Immigration Equality also runs a dedicated hotline for lgbtq and hiv-positive asylum seekers held in Immigration detention facilities, connecting them with direct legal representation or providing them materials for them to prepare their own case in Immigration court.

Advocacy: Immigration Equality advocates against administrative regulations that harm lgbtq and hiv-positive asylum seekers by submitting public comments, filing complaints with federal agencies, and organizing our supporters to contact these same governmental bodies. The organization also litigates on behalf of same-sex couples and their families who have been discriminated against by the u.s. government.

Outreach: Immigration Equality's communications and public engagement efforts focus on the threats to lgbtq and hiv-positive people's safety and Equality, and how the government must remedy them. Immigration Equality's communications team regularly secures state and national level media placements on our issues across print and digital media outlets, television, and radio. More than 20,000 activists, attorneys, faith leaders, and other constituents subscribe to Immigration Equality's emails and action alerts, and our website has hundreds of thousands of unique visitors per year. We have more 27,000 facebook fans, more 16,000 twitter followers, and 8,000 instagram followers.