A young woman from El Salvador, who we will call Elisa, moved to the Easton, Maryland ten years ago in search of better employment than what was available to her in her home country. In making this move, she also made the heartbreaking choice to leave her daughter to live with her grandparents in El Salvador. Five years after her departure, Elisa's parents died in quick succession and Elisa's then 8-your-old daughter went to live with her cousin. Tragically, not long after moving, an extended family member raped the young girl. Afraid to go to the police in El Salvador, the little girl decided to do the unthinkable – to take the long journey to the US border and illegally enter the country to be with her mother, who was unaware of what had happened.

While we have changed the mother's name, the above story is real. Mid-Shore Pro Bono has been working with this family and now has found an immigration lawyer who is now helping Elisa's child obtain a legal visa.

The story is just one example of the types of cases we handle every day at Mid-Shore Pro Bono. It's through the support of people like you that we can carry on doing this important work for an increasingly vulnerable population. And because Mid-Shore Pro Bono (MSPB) has established a reputation as a safe and useful resource for immigrants, we now have an opportunity to take a leading role on the Mid-Shore by launching a new project to provide greater legal assistance to help protect our immigrant residents and their families.

The Vulnerable Populations Assistance Project has several areas of focus and phases of implementation. First and most immediate: increasing public awareness and providing information about immigrants' options. Specifically, we aim to:

• Provide accurate advice and assistance about the documents and information required to ensure US-born children of illegal immigrants are protected and cared for in case a parent is deported. This is essential to countering false information being offered by well-meaning, but poorly informed individuals and organizations and by predatory notarios.
• Hire a part-time bilingual paralegal, along with a bilingual staff member, to work on this specific project. The paralegal will be responsible for meeting with clients detained at the Snow Hill Federal Detention Center, to assist pro bono attorneys, and to help complete asylum papers and other vital documentation.
• Recruit and train local attorneys to provide pro bono assistance as needed once clients have been screened by our bilingual project manager.

We already have the project manager in place and three attorneys recruited, but still need to Hire a part-time bilingual paralegal, along with a bilingual staff member, to work on this specific project. The paralegal will be responsible for meeting with clients detained at the Snow Hill Federal Detention Center, to assist pro bono attorneys, and to help complete asylum papers and other vital documentation.

We are asking the community for support to ensure we have the resources this project needs. With immigration likely to remain an active and highly contentious legal issue for some time to come, the Vulnerable Populations Assistance Project is set to be a critical addition to MSPB’s roster of programs vital to our Mid-Shore communities.

We and all of our partners are non-profit organizations operating with limited resources. We need your help to provide this vital resource to one of the most vulnerable subsets of our population!

Thank you so much for you help!