Digger Covers VAAP’s Lost Funding
VT Digger Reports: Attorneys for immigrants have lost a federal grant, and with it, the ability to take new cases
“This population, their rights are being violated,” said Jill Martin Diaz, executive director of the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project. “Now, we’re really seeing a systematic dismantling of the people available to help.”
by Emma Cotton February 19, 2025, 5:53 pm
Jill Martin Diaz of the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project in Burlington on Monday, Feb. 10. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger.
Vermont Asylum Assistance Project, one of the only organizations that provides legal representation to noncitizen immigrants in Vermont, lost half its staff Tuesday, according to Jill Martin Diaz, the organization’s executive director.
Since Donald Trump took office in January, an increasing number of people in Vermont have faced immigration enforcement actions from the federal government, including detainments and deportations, according to advocates and attorneys. Now, the capacity of one of their primary advocates has been vastly diminished.
“I will not be able to take on a single new case for the rest of the year,” Martin Diaz said in an interview Wednesday.
Specifically, federal funding from the Administration of Children and Families — a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — supported legal representation for minors who came into the U.S. unaccompanied.
The money flowed to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, then to an organization called Acacia Center for Justice, and from there, to an organization called the Immigrant Justice Corps, which provided two fellows to the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project.
The Immigrant Justice Corps is a program that “funds talented new immigration attorneys and legal workers to do immigration case work at host organizations around the country,” Martin Diaz said.
On Tuesday night, the Department of the Interior, which has an operational support role in some federal contracts, informed Acacia Center for Justice that they needed to immediately stop the Unaccompanied Children Program, according to a statement from the Acacia Center for Justice.
Jill Martin Diaz. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
Neither the Administration of Children and Families nor the Department of Interior immediately responded to VTDigger’s requests for comment.
“Acacia’s Unaccompanied Children Program provides legal representation to over 26,000 children in and released from Office of Refugee Resettlement custody, protecting children from trafficking, abuse and exploitation, helping immigration courts run smoother, and ensuring a modicum of due process, so that children navigating the immigration system alone understand their rights and legal obligations,” Shaina Aber, executive director of the Acacia Center for Justice, said in a statement posted to the organization’s website.
Both of the fellows at Vermont Asylum Assistance Project were representing unaccompanied minors, as well as a broader set of immigration cases, according to Martin Diaz.
In total, the organization’s staff included three attorneys working toward their law licenses and Martin Diaz, who is licensed and supervises the others.
The news hit hours after Martin Diaz testified before lawmakers in the House Judiciary Committee where they told lawmakers the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project has recently been too strapped to meet the rising need for their services.
“I am the state’s lone community-based supervising immigration attorney, period,” they said.
The Vermont Asylum Assistance Project represents people “who have a pathway to contribute to the future of Vermont,” and without legal representation, face a greater risk of enforcement action, including deportation, from the federal immigration system, Martin Diaz told lawmakers.
One other law clinic in the state, the Center for Justice Reform Clinic at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, represents immigrants, but focuses on representing people who have been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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On the drive home from the Statehouse, Martin Diaz started hearing rumors about a potential funding loss. Later Tuesday night, they received an email confirmation from the Immigrant Justice Corps that they no longer had funding to support the work.
“I tried to sleep, but couldn’t. So, this morning is when I put plans in motion to support my staff to transition into furlough, and to take over their cases,” they said.
In the last 24 hours, since they learned they would be furloughed, the attorneys have been more concerned about their active cases than their own employment situations, Martin Diaz said.
Cameron Briggs Ramos, one of the attorneys at Vermont Asylum Assistance Project who was furloughed Wednesday, called the stop work order “a targeted and direct attack against thousands of immigrant children across the United States” in a comment sent to VTDigger through Martin Diaz.
“It will be especially felt here in our state of Vermont because of how difficult it can be to get access to legal services and legal representation due to how rural the state is,” she said.
Martin Diaz is expecting to handle roughly 40 cases now, and may need to terminate their final staff member’s employment later this spring due to an additional anticipated loss of federal funding.
It has all happened as the immigrant community is seeing “an uptick in really concerning practices by immigration agencies that are violating noncitizens’ international, constitutional, statutory rights to due process of law,” Martin Diaz said.
If there’s no way to seek a legal remedy when the government violates someone’s rights, “it’s like we didn’t have the right to begin with,” they said.
“That’s my concern, is that this population, their rights are being violated,” they said. “Now, we’re really seeing a systematic dismantling of the people available to help, or the systems available to help those people seek remedies.”
