Author: elianakleiman

Overall, working at Tahirih was an extremely rewarding experience. I’ve gotten exposure to how a small-scale office functions, experienced frustration with getting through the government’s red tape and complex, shifting policies, and learned hands-on how to apply trauma-informed techniques working with mostly female clients affected by domestic or gender-based violence. I was definitely confronted with the experience of burnout, which is present in a lot of social justice work but particularly in an office that serves many victims of traumatizing sexual, physical, and psychological abuse. I was appreciative that Tahirih gives its employees tools for coping with burnout and practicing self-care; we even had a day where the entire staff left the office early to go to an aromatherapy shop together. I gained valuable exposure not just to legal work but also to individuals who can help mentor me in future paths: staff attorneys who practice immigration and family law, as well as fellow intern law students with varying kinds of masters degrees and experiences.

My most impactful project of the summer was the Know Your Rights resources flyer I created and a Family Preparedness Plan toolkit. I hope that the office will be able to use these resources to give clients the information they need to defend themselves against immigration enforcement in Maryland. I even shared these resources with Tahirih’s DC office, which will be able to use them as templates for their locations across the country. The most personally rewarding experience was working one-on-one with a client on their VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) declaration. It emotionally impacted me to hear a client’s story firsthand, and to be able to use their story to help them get immigration status and a path to safety. Additionally, listening to the client’s story made me especially appreciative of Tahirih’s unique comprehensive model that gives its clients services in immigration law, family law, and social services. It is now difficult to imagine individuals reliving their trauma in the immigration system without the additional support of social services such as those that Tahirih offers.

Something I wish I had known before I started, which is something to keep in mind going into any kind of work with immigrant or victim clients (particularly domestic/gender-based violence victims), is to be conscious of the emotional toll this kind of work takes and how to cope with it. Anyone hearing these clients’ stories on a regular basis is vulnerable to experiencing second-hand trauma, and it is important to practice self-care by taking appropriate breaks, working from home as needed, getting enough sleep and finding activities at home that are calming. I wish I had known more about my own personal limits and what kind of self-care works for me prior to the internship, but I was appreciative that the staff members were supportive in helping me figure it out and making my schedule extremely flexible.

Working at Tahirih was an extremely positive and rewarding experience in which I learned about working with vulnerable immigrant individuals in a healthy, emotionally-supportive environment.

Particularly within the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department at Brandeis, my classes this past year have compelled me to think a lot about the savior narratives that many organizations tend to have towards women and girls transnationally. Classes such as Professor ChaeRan Freeze’s WMGS 5A and Professor Harleen Singh’s Postcolonial Feminisms had me thinking about campaigns that reinforce the idea that women and girls of color in largely non-Western countries need saving from their patriarchal culture and the men in their culture. This kind of narrative degrades women by portraying them as helpless without the aid of Western non-profits or service workers. Particularly within the immigration context, it is easy for asylum-seekers to feel re-traumatized and as if they have lost control of their autonomy/story/narrative in the immigration system. This savior narrative, which is driven by many non-profits that serve refugee populations, acts to take away individuals’ narratives even more.

Admittedly, I was a bit nervous when I first heard about the Tahirih Justice Center (which primarily serves women and girls who are victims of domestic and gender-based violence), as I thought it would be another organization to reinforce this harmful narrative. However, since working at Tahirih, I have found that they do all in their power to combat this savior narrative and actually empower their clients to take control of their lives and stories. In fact, on many Tahirih advertising and informational materials, they describe their clients as “courageous immigrant women and girls who refuse to be victims of violence.” The efficient services that Tahirih provides–including pathways to immigration status and social services like therapy and help finding housing–allow clients to take control of their lives again. This is particularly important for victims of domestic violence here in the U.S. Many of our clients are completely reliant on their abusers when they first seek our services, and Tahirih does everything in its power to provide them tools to lead independent, self-sufficient lives.

This mindset of empowering clients (even in an immigration system that does a lot to disempower them) is what I am thinking about as I start assisting on one of our lawyer’s VAWA cases this week. VAWA, the Violence Against Women Act, was put in place specifically to protect immigrant victims of domestic violence and give them a pathway to status that may otherwise be barred by an abuser. I am looking forward to sitting in on an interview with the client and the lawyer, during which the lawyer will ask questions that will help us write the client’s declaration. I will be observing the ways that the lawyer phrases questions so as not to re-traumatize the client, but rather to give them space to tell their story exactly how they want to tell it.

I am also excited about a project I am working on that is a resource guide with information about how to prepare for ICE immigration raids, with information about knowing your rights, hotlines to report ICE raids, hotlines for domestic violence, and family planning guide. This user-friendly resource contains information that is catered to our clients and is meant to give them the resources they need to stay safe during potential raids.

It has been inspiring to see that Tahirih is truly working towards the mission to empower its clients–who are made up largely of women and girls. It has been a valuable learning experience thus far to partake in work that supports this mission.

Ellie Kleiman ’21

Having worked for the past year at the Brandeis student-run immigration legal clinic, The Right to Immigration Institute (TRII), this summer I was excited for the opportunity to further develop my knowledge of the immigration legal system at a well-established, multi-city nonprofit: the Tahirih Justice Center.

From my first two weeks of training, I quickly began to realize just how different Tahirih is from TRII despite providing many of the same services, and what strategies I can take back to my work at TRII during the school year. The most obvious difference is that Tahirih only serves immigrant survivors of gender-based violence, and for the most part, only takes a handful of the more serious cases.

This means that any given client must be an immigrant who qualifies for a serious type of relief (i.e. asylum) and has also experienced violence because of their gender or sexuality. This results in a client base of mostly women who have experienced some very serious trauma, and some of them are currently undergoing trauma in abusive domestic relationships that our center helps them get out of.

Tahirih fills the wide gap of immigrant women who are often unable to get help because many immigration legal organizations are scarce in resources and therefore are not properly trauma-informed and don’t know specifically how to cater to women and individuals who have experienced traumatic gender-based violence. One way that Tahirih is trauma-informed and creates a safe space for survivors is its secrecy and selectivity. The small office is discreet and only accessible to employees and clients, and any potential clients are put through three rounds of phone screenings.

The training period of the first two weeks was extremely in-depth, conducted by the lawyers themselves and through webinars. I learned techniques necessary to help a client feel comfortable in our office and reclaim their narrative by giving them space to tell their story their way– something that is often disregarded in the highly invasive and re-traumatizing immigration process.

As one can imagine in this political climate, the world of immigration law is constantly shifting, which makes for extremely uneasy situations for our clients. Just last year, the attorney general released an unprecedented memo that advised judges not to grant asylum on the basis of domestic or gang violence, and revoked a grant of asylum in a domestic violence case. Last week, Trump tweeted that mass raids and deportations in major cities (including Baltimore, where my office is) would begin Sunday. These changes constantly arise, which keeps interns like me busy.

In response to the deportation threat, one of my projects this summer is to compile a trauma-informed resource guide/toolkit for our clients with families, to prepare in case of deportation. This will include instructions on how to designate another guardian for one’s child, emergency numbers to call, and know your rights guides. There are many family preparedness guides already out there, but most are not trauma-informed or gender-specific. Some of our clients in abusive domestic relationships or with abusive family members may need to create alternative safety plans for their children or prepare in different ways.

I know that my other responsibilities at the office–helping file immigration forms, conducting new client screenings, and meeting with clients, to name a few–help the office run smoothly for this summer. However, I am most excited about this deportation guide project because it will be a sustainable resource that clients can use for weeks and months to come. Nonprofits like Tahirih are so important as the government continues to make it increasingly difficult to navigate the immigration system and increasingly difficult for individuals like our clients to obtain status, especially without legal representation. Tahirih’s lawyers are extraordinarily committed and thorough in their work, and I am excited for a summer of being able to support their work and make their (very difficult) jobs a little bit easier in any way I can.

Eliana Kleiman ’21