Immigrant Rights
Working to create an immigration system consistent with our highest values — because immigrant rights are civil and human rights
Bringing fairness and dignity to our legal system is one of the most profound civil and human rights issues of our time. The unequal treatment of people of color and people who are low-income undermines the progress we have made over the past five decades toward equality under the law.
New research shows that nearly one in two adults in America — approximately 113 million people — has an immediate family member who is currently or formerly incarcerated. Our nation must be willing to imagine new paradigms for public safety that do not rely exclusively on criminalization, and we must take bold action to end the structural inequalities and racism that plague the system.
At The Leadership Conference, our team partners with coalition members, local communities, and impacted people to build a fair and equitable legal system. Together, we are addressing injustice at every stage – from policing and pretrial detention to sentencing and incarceration to reentry. We also advocate for decarceration through the limited use of prisons and jails and the creation of meaningful pathways to redemption and rehabilitation.
Vision for Justice 2020 and Beyond: A New Paradigm for Public Safety
September 2019
The American criminal-legal system is a stain on our democracy. The system replicates and reinforces patterns of racial and economic oppression that trace from slavery — and the result is a criminal-legal bureaucracy that denies millions of people the opportunities, legal equality, and human rights they deserve while fueling the world’s highest incarceration rate.
Vision for Justice 2020 and Beyond: A New Paradigm for Public Safety, developed in partnership with Civil Rights Corps, is a comprehensive platform of policy ideas to transform our criminal-legal system and change the way we approach public safety in this country. The Leadership Conference developed this platform because existing policies — and even new proposals — are often piecemeal and overly cautious. It is time for bold ideas. It is time to achieve the change we desperately need: a fundamental transformation and reorientation of the criminal-legal system. We created Vision for Justice 2020 and Beyond to offer exactly this prescription.
Latest News
At The Leadership Conference, we believe America is made better by immigrants. America is made stronger by families who lay down new roots here, by refugees who find new lives and freedoms here, by employees who bring new energy and ideas. And America is made brighter by all who choose to call this country home.
But for decades, our immigration policies have failed us. Our system for allocating visas is woefully inadequate, forcing many would-be immigrants to wait in line for years or even decades and driving many others to come through dangerous, unregulated channels.
Instead of reforming the system to keep up with demand and grow our economy, Congress and the executive branch persistently respond through new harsh and inhumane enforcement measures — separating immigrant children from their parents, creating fast-track deportation systems that lead to more mistakes, putting more people in for-profit immigration jails, or simply creating humanitarian crises across the border.
We support immigration reform that includes more paths to citizenship for longtime immigrants, fair and humane enforcement that is consistent with our values, family reunification, and strong civil rights protections for new working immigrants as well as for people who have been here all their lives.
When opponents of immigration reform try to stir up economic fears to pit communities of color against each other, or when they openly advance racist ideologies and conspiracy theories, our coalition will continue speaking out and pushing back. We will continue to protect our most vulnerable communities and demand a home for everyone here in our nation — a nation founded by refugees, immigrants, and those seeking religious freedom.
Families Belong Together
On June 30, 2018, the Families Belong Together rally saw more than 35,000 people take to the streets of Washington, D.C. to protest the Trump administration’s horrific family separation policy. The rally coincided with 788 other events across 50 states.
The coalition continues our work to permanently end family separation and detention, seek accountability for the harm that’s been done, and immediately reunite all families who remain torn apart.
Know your rights: The educational rights of immigrant children
The Constitution and the Supreme Court guarantee all children in the United States the right to attend school regardless of their immigration status.
Conozca sus derechos: Los derechos educativos de los niños inmigrantes
La Constitución y la Corte Suprema les garantizan a todos los niños en los Estados Unidos el derecho a la educación pública sin importar su estatus migratorio.
The courts are all that stand between Dreamers and Trump’s deportation force. If you care about immigrants, then you must care about our courts.
Latest News
The Ending of Title 42 Is Long Overdue; We Must Ensure an Immediate Fair and Just Immigration Process
WASHINGTON — Maya Wiley, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, issued the following statement on the lifting of Title 42 and the migrant expulsion policy originally adopted by the Trump administration to turn away people seeking asylum at the U.S. border.