Immigration Legal Clinics for Labor-Based Deferred Action

This toolkit aims to share information about how to organize legal clinics for workers who may be eligible for labor-based deferred action under the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policy announced in January 2023.

Given the limited capacity for providing full legal representation to all eligible workers, as well as the financial burden for workers of seeking private immigration counsel, legal clinics have emerged as an important model for democratizing access to this legal process. We hope organizers and advocates working with immigrant communities will consider using a clinic model to empower workers to obtain immigration protections and to assert their rights in the workplace.

This toolkit provides an overview of key components of legal clinics, with an emphasis on the specific clinic model used to support seafood processing workers in New Bedford, Massachusetts (the “Eastern Fisheries” case) through the successful collaboration of three organizations–Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores (CCT), Justice at Work, and the Justice Center of Southeast Massachusetts.

By leveraging the resources of their organizations and communities, these legal clinics assisted over 100 workers in filing deferred action applications. The National Immigration Law Center has played a supporting role by providing technical support and compiling this toolkit based on the generous contributions and documents shared by the three partnering organizations.

This toolkit is not intended to provide the only model for legal clinics or to provide rigid how-to instructions, but rather offers general information, as well as examples, practice pointers, and lessons learned from the deferred action clinics organized on behalf of Eastern Fisheries workers.

We encourage advocates, organizers, and legal practitioners to tailor this clinic model to the needs and resources of their communities. The final page of this toolkit includes resources on filing for deferred action and organizing legal clinics, as well as a link to access appendices with samples and documents from the Eastern Fisheries clinics.