For this month’s Member Spotlight, we spoke with the Legal Director of the Immigrant Rights Project at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in New Jersey — Alexandra Goncalves-Peña. 

As an NJAIJ staff member, I know the work that AFSC does, but how would you describe your work to someone who knows nothing about the organization?

So, the larger AFSC is a peace and justice organization that has existed since 1917 – for over a hundred years. Currently, we have programs throughout the United States and globally, and we mainly focus on issues relating to global migration, peace, and economic sustainability.

AFSC’s work in New Jersey is unique because of its focus on immigrant rights. What is it about New Jersey that led to the creation of this program?

It was a need. It started in the early 90s, around the time that there was a large number of immigrants migrating from Central America due to regional conflict in the 1980s and 1990s. The AFSC program was a way to respond to that need. Initially, it mostly focused on organizing and advocating on behalf of these immigrant groups, and then they started providing legal representation to those who were eligible. Since then, we've just been growing our entire team to where we are now with a staff of approximately 43 people.

We do three things. Those who are doing this work understand that there's no one direct way to rectify the ills of the immigration system, our immigration laws, and our policies. One way to do that is certainly direct representation — providing assistance to individuals who are seeking benefits before the United States government or are actively at risk of being removed from the United States. We also need our advocacy and organizers — my co-director, Araceli Argueta, is focused on the advocacy and organizing part — because we need good laws and policies on the local, state, and national levels. Finally, we also have an incredible social work team that does a lot with very little to support our clients holistically. Just the daily determinants are so important for our clients, maybe even more so than the legal assistance that we provide.

So in terms of the legal department, do you work with clients on a case-by-case basis?

Yes, exactly. We provide direct representation to individuals who are in removal proceedings, detained and non-detained, and filing for benefits before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). 

How do you see the work being impacted by local and national politics, on a governance level?

We feel it most directly with federal politics. The federal policies are the ones that direct our work. It changes depending on the administration under which the immigration agencies are operating.

I’m just going to say it: it's going to be incredibly difficult under the Trump administration. I did work as a legal services practitioner and manager during Trump's first term, and it was incredibly difficult. It felt like we were playing whack-a-mole with policies that were seemingly coming out every single day, certainly every week — trying to change asylum law, trying to upend judicial decisions that supported certain asylum claims for our clients, new policies that changed so many of the benefits that our clients were eligible for. It directly impacts our work. 

Over the last four years under the Biden administration, it has certainly been a little less aggressive with some things, but he has been actively deporting individuals with gusto, basically following what President Obama did when he was in office. It's been very challenging for our providers who represent our clients who are detained. It's going to become much more challenging under the new administration just given all of the promises that Trump has made and the fact that it does look like they are actively looking for a way to make that a reality. 

We have people that were otherwise eligible for an application but might not want to do it because they are now at risk of exposing themselves, or because we don't know whether they're going to do away with that benefit. Certainly, with the situation right now, there are no checks and balances — they have the Supreme Court, the Presidency, the House of Representatives, and the Senate. Those protections are not in place. Now, they could maybe do something with our current laws and people would have to take the risk of exposing themselves even though just a few months ago they would have been statutorily eligible and at much less risk of being actively pursued by the United States government for removal. That's just one example. It just affects us so much.

Have you and the team been having these internal scenario planning sessions and those discussions?

Certainly. Right now, for example, we’re looking at certain cases, which maybe we can speed up in court, or advocate for in another way. The problem is that we don't know what's coming. We can suspect — many of us that were doing this previously, we can guess — the elimination of TPS, the elimination of DACA, for example, those are probably the easiest things that they can eliminate right now. So the question is: how can we respond to the needs of those demographics sooner rather than later, because we know that there might be really limited things that we could do following January 20th. 

So, basically, you’re going to be working overtime for these next couple of months.

Yeah. I mean, just preparing as much as possible, doing what we can with the information that we have, informing our existing clients, doing as much outreach as we can, but also taking care of ourselves. I think that in many ways, that has to come first. We cannot pour from an empty cup. It’s going to be difficult, and we need to be okay in order to do this work, and we need to be supporting one another. Sustainability is going to be really important.

What is it like being a part of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice (NJAIJ), New Jersey’s largest immigrant rights coalition — both for you and as an AFSC leader? How do you think that can help you — all of us! — in these coming months and years?

It's absolutely integral. The work that NJAIJ does on policy and advocacy is just incredibly important. I think that now, we need to coordinate even more and I think there's opportunities for that. I don't know what that can look like, but I know it's going to be vital moving forward. We need to know what everybody is seeing on the ground; we need to know how people are responding so that we can engage in the best practices for our communities.

I know AFSC has been involved in the push to pass the Immigrant Trust Act, a bill that guarantees protections to immigrant New Jerseyans and empowers them to access public services without fear of deportation or family separation. Do you feel there’s an opportunity for local policy to ‘stand up’ to national policy?

Absolutely. Right now, more than ever, we need local policy. We need as many welcoming policies as possible to push back, and the Immigrant Trust Act would be absolutely incredible.

So, do you anticipate that you will need to expand your bandwidth of services next year?

Absolutely. This is the issue: we cannot meet the need. We haven't been able to meet the need for years. The need is just going to grow, and as a result of that, we need more sustained funding. We need cities and the State of New Jersey to step up the financial support for our organizations that are on the ground doing the work.

I think what we also need is some creative solutions — to open up our thinking to things we haven’t been talking about up until now. From what we understand, the scale of this is so big we couldn't meet it even if we had all the money in the world and all the lawyers in the world. So we have to turn to the community, and I think community defense is something we as legal service providers really need to lean into. We need to start bringing in as many volunteers to help us with the work  — to start training community members to help the community with filing applications and preparing individuals for their hearings and interviews. We need to go outside of our little box in terms of how to respond to the legal issues at hand, and figure out ways to best engage the community. It's not ideal, but we're not going to get to ideal.

So in terms of community: what do you think AFSC wants the community members to feel at this time?

You're being listened to. You're not alone. We have so much love for you. We are going to do everything we can to protect you and your families.

Is there anything that you do for self-care, personally?

It's embarrassing. I like true crime. Is that terrible? It's terrible. Also, taking care of my body by exercising. It helps release good chemicals. It’s also important to keep reminding myself — when I'm feeling bad that I can't do more for my community or questioning whether I'm doing enough — that it's not my fault. That it's not our fault. The only fault is the systems of oppression under which we are forced to work, and those in power that have continued to allow this wound to fester.