Big Law Rushes to Reunite Families Separated under Trump's Immigration Policy
Blank Rome is proud to be a part of Project Corazon, joining forces with law firms and nonprofit organizations to reunite immigrant and asylum-seeking families who have been separated. To learn more about this project, please read The National Law Journal article: Big Law Rushes to Reunite Families Separated under Trump's Immigration Policy.
Article Excerpt:
Several Big Law firms, including Kirkland & Ellis, Covington & Burling and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, have teamed up to reunite immigrant and asylum-seeking families who’ve been separated under the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy.
Over 2,300 children have been separated from their parents since the administration policy was announced in April, which led to a dramatic ramp-up in criminal prosecutions of immigrants who illegally crossed the United States’ southwestern border.
While an executive order last Wednesday instructs agencies to now detain families together, instead of separating them, only about 500 children under Border Patrol custody have been returned to their parents so far.
The lack of immediate clarity over how agencies will reunite families has spurred over 40 law firms and organizations to attempt to fill that void. They have paired with a nonprofit group to launch Project Corazon—the latest push among a slate of other immigration rights groups and pro bono lawyers working to reunite families.
“The more time that goes by, the harder it becomes to get them back in touch with extended family,” Traci Feit Love, the founder of Lawyers for Good Government Foundation, the nonprofit behind Project Corazon, said June 22.
The coalition of firms and groups, led by Kirkland, includes Ballard Spahr, Blank Rome, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, Greenberg Traurig, Perkins Coie, Weil, Gotshal & Manges and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.