PANGEA LEGAL SERVICES
350 Sansome Street STE 650, San Francisco, CA 94104 www.pangealegal.org

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Organizations Filed Purposes: Pangea's mission is to provide deportation defense services, advocate for policy change, and provide education and legal empowerment for our immigrant communities.

Direct Legal Representation: In 2019, Pangea provided full scope representation to a total of 496 clients, 90% of whom were in deportation proceedings and the majority of whom were asylum seekers. 63 clients won long-term relief (out of 64litigated and completed). Pangea led 17 public campaigns to advocate for the release of clients in detention centers. Many of these detained cases required multiple appeals and litigation at higher courts, which resulted in 4 federal court victories. Pangea attorneys also conducted over 112 consultations for individuals in detention, some of which included extensive follow-ups, legal research, referrals, and brief legal services. Relatedly, in August 2019, ICE arrested 680 immigrant workers in Mississippi as part of the biggest ever workplace immigration raid in a single state. Pangea responded and organized across the U.S. to take on pro bono cases. Pangea also represented three affected families on a pro bono basis. A Pangea attorney traveled to the ICE detention center in Louisiana twice to represent three detained individuals, advocating forcefully to obtain hearings before the court, and ultimately securing the release of two fathers while continuing to appeal a third case. Avenues to lawful status for our clients included asylum, withholding of removal, protection under the Convention Against Torture, cancellation of removal, U Visas, T Visas, and adjustment of status. Representation included bond hearings, merits hearings, motions to reopen, appeals to the Board of Immigration Appeals and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, petitions before the Federal District Court, credible fear interviews and reasonable fear interviews.

Education and Legal Empowerment: In July 2019, after receiving news of impending raids, Pangea and Bay Area rapid response networks spoke out at rallies to denounce ICE's plans, helped lead a press conference at SFO to expose ICE's scare tactics, and delivered demand letters to ICE field offices. Pangea attorneys also responded to reports of ICE arrests coming through the rapid response hotlines. When ICE denied Pangea attorneys access to individuals arrested in the raids, Pangea and the ACLU sued ICE. As a result, a federal judge put ICE on notice that it must provide individuals with the right to speak to an attorney before deporting them. These actions contributed to massive community mobilization that ultimately preempted raids in the Bay Area on the day the Administration threatened thousands of arrests. Furthermore, the promotores program- a curriculum to train immigrant leaders to advocate for their own cases and communities- expanded to Santa Clara County in 2019 and trained 25 directly affected families. So far, 15 graduates of the program, including three Pangea clients, have become full-time organizers, forming their own organization, and are members with voting rights of the Steering Committee for the Santa Clara County Rapid Response Network (SCCRRN).

Policy Advocacy: Pangea continued serving as fiscal lead of FREE-SF, a coalition of nonprofit organizations in San Francisco that that advocates against the co-inflation of criminal and immigration issues. In 2019, Pangea proudly advocated for AB 32, a new law in California that will prohibit the operation of private, for-profit prisons, including facilities that operate as immigration detention centers, along with our community and an intersectional coalition of immigrant rights and criminal justice advocates. Pangea clients educated the public and lawmakers on the need to abolish prisons by sharing first hand experiences. As soon as we passed this bill, the private prison company GEO Group and the federal government sued California. While awaiting a final ruling from the federal court, Pangea and community members throughout the state are working together to push back on new expansions of private prisons and uphold the law. On the local level, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors announced in early 2019 that it would consider changes to the county's sanctuary policy, and engage in greater collaboration with ICE. In response, Pangea and the Forum for Immigrant Rights & Empowerment (FIRE) Coalition sprang into action. Five Pangea clients spoke directly to the Board about their experience of ICE terrorizing immigrant families. After hearing testimony, the Board voted unanimously not only to maintain the county's sanctuary policy, but to clarify and strengthen it, making it the strictest non-cooperation policy with ICE in the nation.

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Data for this page was sourced from XML published by IRS (public 990 form dataset) from: https://s3.amazonaws.com/irs-form-990/202033049349301298_public.xml