Dear Friend of PAIR,

Happy spring! In this season of new beginnings, it is also a great time to take on a full representation asylum case. We have a number of detained and non-detained asylum seeking clients who are in need of pro bono placement below. As always, please reach out if you may be interested and/or have any questions!

Melanie

Pro Bono Involvement Coordinator

Legal Updates/Reminders

Fee Waivers

Fees for most applications can be waived for certain low-income individuals. Your client may be eligible for a fee waiver if they receive a means-tested benefit (such as MassHealth) or if their household income falls at or below 150% FPL. If you believe your client may qualify for a fee waiver, or if you have any questions about fee waivers in general, please contact your PAIR mentor. 

Boston Asylum Office: Short Notice List Interviews

The Boston Asylum Office is slowly beginning to work its way through its backlog by scheduling interviews for applicants on the short notice list. If your client has been on the short notice since 2017 or earlier, please contact your PAIR mentor!

Moving and Advancing of Massachusetts and Connecticut Immigration Court Hearings

On April 8, 2024 the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) will be opening a new immigration court in Chelmsford, Massachusetts (the “Lowell Immigration Court”). In the coming weeks and months, EOIR will be pulling cases of individuals who reside in certain zip codes from the Boston and Hartford Immigration Court dockets and transferring them to Lowell.

Because the Lowell court will have a complete slate of new cases, cases on the Lowell docket will likely proceed much more quickly than cases have in Boston and Hartford. When cases are transferred, the Boston/Hartford hearing dates will be canceled, and it is very likely that the rescheduled date will be significantly sooner. And because cases will be removed from the Boston and Hartford dockets, it is likely that cases which remain in those courts will also be advanced when hearing slots from transferred cases open up.

If you have a case pending in the Boston or Hartford courts, we strongly recommend that you check the EOIR online portal regularly to check your client’s next hearing date.

As always, if you have questions about anything, including how these changes will affect your clients’ cases, please contact your PAIR mentor.

PAIR's Detention Program Needs You!

PAIR's Detention Program is actively recruiting pro bono attorneys to represent ICE detainees whose asylum/withholding of removal/Convention Against Torture (CAT) cases are pending in the Boston (and soon to be Lowell) Immigration Courts. All hearings are completely virtual via Webex.

PAIR will provide close case mentoring and training on these detained cases. There are currently a number of cases right now for individuals from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Georgia, Russia, and Kyrgyzstan. Individual hearing dates range from May to July 2024.

To learn more about what a detained case entails, we recommend that you please register for the Representing Immigrants Detained by ICE in New England training below.

If you have questions in the meantime, please email PAIR's Detention Manager, Irene Freidel at ifreidel@pairproject.org or

Melanie Gleason, PAIR's Pro Bono Involvement Coordinator at mgleason@pairproject.org. Thank you! 

Upcoming Training

Available Asylum Pro Bono Cases

To read the longer case abstract for each the cases below, please click here.

If you are an attorney and are interested in taking on one of the below non-detained asylum cases, please email me at mgleason@pairproject.org.

Asylum (Immigration Court): GEC (Honduras) is a a 32-year-old woman who fears returning to Honduras with her four children due to domestic violence and death threats they have endured.

Asylum (Immigration Court): CCM (El Salvador) is a 30-year-old woman who fled El Salvador to escape her abusive partner.

Asylum (Immigration Court): LRF (Ecuador) is a 40-year-old Ecuadorian woman who has suffered various forms of abuse due to being an indigenous/ Kichwa and disabled woman.

Asylum (Immigration Court): WM (Haiti) is a 29-year-old man who fled Haiti due to his political activism.

Asylum (Immigration Court): JM (Dominican Republic) is a 44-year-old Dominican woman who fled due to domestic violence.

Asylum (Asylum Office): HMNW (Myanmar) is a 22-year-old man who is scared to return to Myanmar due to his political activism.

Asylum (Immigration Court): AB (Mauritania) is a 27 year-old-man who fled Mauritania after he was subjected to torture, as well as physical attacks, on account of his Halpulaar ethnicity.