Legal Defense Fund

The Central American Resource Center (CARECEN) needs your help to continue providing low and no-cost bilingual legal and community support services to Latino immigrants in the Washington metropolitan area. For 30 years CARECEN has been addressing the legal needs of Latinos in the area, facilitating their transition to the United States, and providing them with the resources and tools necessary to become thriving and engaged community members.

What is the Legal Defense Fund?

Since 2009, our legal director, two paralegals and the addition of two Equal Justice Works AmeriCorps Fellows have allowed us to better meet the Latino Community's growing needs. Early this year, CARECEN established a Legal Defense Fund to sustain its expanded legal program and services. The program assists more than 3,000 community members each year with naturalization, obtaining and maintaining Temporary Protected Status (TPS), family visa petitions, adjustment of status, consular processing, legal relief for crime victims through U Visas and the Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act (NACARA), asylum relief, and deportation defense.

The ongoing economic crisis has had a huge impact on nonprofits like CARECEN and the community we serve. The legal program has been hit very hard with a significant loss of funds from private foundations. Immigrant communities are facing an increasingly hostile environment in which local police act as immigration agents, deportations are on the rise and families are being torn apart.

What does this mean?

CARECEN needs to secure more funding in order to continue providing essential legal and community services to meet the growing needs of Latinos in the area. CARECEN provides an invaluable link between the community we serve and the legal system they struggle to navigate. The community counts on CARECEN to help protect their rights. CARECEN also educates the community with workshops on immigrants' rights and responsibilities, preparation for legalization, avoiding notario fraud scams. Furthermore, CARECEN provides essential information and resources on taxes, employment, Elder Law issues and access to public benefits.

How can you support vital legal services to Latinos?

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MAKE A DONATION TO THE CARECEN LEGAL DEFENSE FUND TODAY! Our goal is to raise $100,000 through the end of the year - allowing us to sustain the legal program at its current capacity, while serving more Latinos in the area at low or no cost and responding to their emerging legal needs.