Immigrant & BIPOC Solidarity NE Ohio

06/18/2026

Join CAIR Northern Ohio on Friday, June 19th to celebrate to Juneteenth. Come register to vote and stay for the popsicles and kids’s activities! You’ll also have a chance to be featured in our video about Juneteenth means to Cleveland! 🎥

We can’t wait to see you at Edgewater Park (upper Level near the kid’s park) at 2pm-5pm inshaAllah! Please share widely!

06/18/2026

Dear Immigration Partners,

We're writing to share news that we are going to begin hosting free legal clinics for immigrants in need of legal advice. This includes immigrants at risk of detention or deportation and/or those needing advice on how to adjust their status for legal residency. The first clinic will be Monday, June 22nd, at 6 p.m., and clinics will continue twice a month.



Please encourage your immigrant friends, family, and neighbors to register for these clinics, or sign up yourself if they will benefit you. Also, please consider volunteering with us to help make these clinics a success. Registration form in English (and with links to Spanish, French, and Nepali):

https://form.jotform.com/261436313077050.



Please note that what we are offering is only a stop-gap measure, as the City of Cleveland Heights has thus far refused to fund legal aid representation for immigrants, even when our proposal offered funding options as low as $5,000. Instead, CH4IR is offering this free legal aid clinic program, using pro bono services from a few lawyers who are able to offer a few hours for free advice (not representation). Pat Espinosa, of Sus Abogados Latinos, is kicking off the series with the first three clinics:



- Citizenship & Naturalization, Monday, 6/22, 6-7 pm (virtual)

- Family Preparedness & Power of Attorney, Monday, 7/6, 6-7 pm (virtual)

- DACA / "Dreamers" / Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival, Monday, 7/20, 6-7 pm (virtual)



While our focus has been on providing free legal aid clinics to residents of Cleveland Heights specifically, we will not turn anyone away if there is space. You do not need to be a resident of Cleveland Heights to sign up for a clinic appointment.



How can you help?

- Print and distribute the attached flyer (especially to places frequented by undocumented immigrants).

- Reach out to immigrants you know and encourage them to sign up for a clinic appointment if they need legal advice.

- Host immigrants who want to attend virtually but need a safe place and/or access to a computer with wifi.

- Facilitate a legal aid clinic session (as a legal expert, as a Zoom room coordinator, or to assist with future in-person clinics).

- Provide language translation services for non-English speaking participants.

- Sign up to canvas workplaces (see below).

- Other (let us know what you can do!)

Jamie Hickner is coordinating CH4IR’s legal aid project. If you would like to volunteer, please email: [email protected].



Want to Canvas?

Cleveland Heights for Immigrant Rights will be canvassing businesses this Saturday, June 20th at 2 p.m. This will involve visiting businesses and sharing information about upcoming legal aid clinics, having conversations to find out which immigration legal aid topics are needed most urgently, and registering people to attend clinics.

Sheila Keller is coordinating CH4IR’s canvassing of businesses. If you would like to volunteer to canvas, please email: [email protected]



Topics for Upcoming Legal Aid Clinics (depending on need):

- Pathways to Permanent Residency: Green Cards, Family Petitions, and Adjustment of Status

- Humanitarian Relief: Asylum, Refugee Status, Humanitarian Parole, TPS (Temporary Protective Status)

- Relief for Survivors and Vulnerable Populations: U Visas for Victims of Crime, T Visas for Survivors of Human Trafficking, Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Self-Petitions, SIJS (Special Immigrant Juvenile Status)

- Family-Based Immigration & Permanent Residency: Family-Based Petitions, Adjustment of Status, Green Cards (renewal, replacement, removal of conditions), Mixed-Status Families

- Employment-Based Immigration: H-1B Visas, Employment-Based Green Cards, Workers' Rights, Wage Theft

- Enforcement, Detention & Removal Defense: Immigration Habeas Petitions (Detention), Know Your Rights During ICE Encounters, Emergency Family Preparedness Planning

Thank you, so much, for helping to get the word out! We look forward to hearing from you!

Warm regards,

Jamie Hickner & Sheila Keller

Cleveland Heights for Immigrant Rights

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06/12/2026

06/12/2026

06/09/2026

Let's begin with abolition of pirvate prisons.

David Venturella's appointment as acting ICE director is the latest in a pattern: Many former employees of the private prison company GEO Group end up working at the federal agency, and vice versa.

06/06/2026

CH4IR submitted a public records request to Cleveland Heights for their Flock search records Months ago - We have yet to receive a response. It makes you wonder what Cleveland Heights has to hide...

Read the story here: https://www.wkyc.com/video/news/local/cleveland/flock-no-protesters-flood-council-meeting-as-cleveland-considers-extending-safety-camera-contract/95-14d76b67-17ee-48a0-9af6-001d36b315d5

Learn more about the fight against Flock here: https://linktr.ee/clvhts4immigrantrights1

06/06/2026

Austin Kocher: "Migration isn't a problem to be solved." Amelia Frank-Vitale on Borders, Caravans, and the Banal Violence of Deportation"
Amelia Frank-Vitale, an assistant professor of anthropology at Princeton, has spent over a decade studying what deportation actually does to people in Honduras. Her new book, Leave If You Can: Migration and Violence in Bordered Worlds, argues that deportation is part of larger cycles of displacement that fuel further migration and leave untouched the underlying conditions that make people leave in the first place. Amelia and I sat down this week to talk through the book, and I’d encourage you to watch the full conversation above.

Leave If You Can provides the on-the-ground research needed to contextualize what reporters are finding at reception centers in Honduras right now. Caitlin Dickerson reported last month in The Atlantic that parents are arriving in detainee sweatsuits asking aid workers whether they lose their parental rights when they are deported. Research by Zain Lakhani at the Women’s Refugee Commission, which we covered earlier this year, finds that under the current administration, 800 mothers have been detained and 60 percent deported, nearly double the rate under Biden. My conversation with Amelia offers insights from a decade of research that connects the conditions producing displacement in Honduras to the enforcement cycles that perpetuate it.https://austinkocher.substack.com/p/migration-isnt-a-problem-to-be-solved?triedRedirect=true