For over 10 years, New England Justice for Our Neighbors has provided free, expert legal aid to low- and no-income immigrants, specializing in humanitarian-based cases. Our clients include unaccompanied minors, asylum applicants, and victims of violence. We currently serve immigrants across Western, Central, and Northeast Massachusetts, providing both in-person and remote appointments. We are proud to be an affiliate of the Immigration Law & Justice Network.
Our work helps families stay together, victims of violence escape further harm, asylum seekers find a safe haven, and unaccompanied minors begin a new, more promising future. The effects of legal status ripple out from our clients themselves, who are often heads of household, to their children and eventually additional generations.
Before coming to the United States, “Andrés” lived in Guatemala in a one-room house with his parents, three siblings, and six other family members. The 12-person household made only $40/month, often lacked food to eat, and could not afford medical care. Andrés was forced to leave school in sixth grade in order to work in the fields and help support his family. When he turned 16, he made the perilous journey north to join his older brother in hopes of improving his living conditions.
Last year, “Juan,” an indigenous Guatemalan teenager living in Great Barrington, attended one of New England JFON’s virtual legal clinics.
Yosselin is a young woman from Guatemala who was abandoned by her father as an infant. Yosselin’s uncle was registered as her father on her birth certificate because it was improper for a child to not have a father in her culture. Yosselin never knew her real father and grew up living in extreme poverty with a mother who barely made enough to survive. As she got older, gang members started threatening Yosselin so that she would become “their woman.” Yosselin refused, both because of her Christian values and because she knew that young women who become romantic partners of gang members are often forced to commit crimes and are often raped and murdered. She fled to the United States to escape this violence and extreme poverty and to pursue her dream of continuing her studies.