Our Programs

Hazte valer is an idiom that means Assert yourself or Make yourself matter. Through “Hazte Valer,” immigration attorney Luis Campos offers hour-long initial consultations to anyone who has immigration questions or needs help or a second opinion. We charge clients only $50 for this hour, and The Alliance pays the remaining part of Luis’s fees ($100) and expenses.

The importance of legal representation for people in immigration proceedings cannot be overstated: Detained people with counsel are ten times more likely to win their immigration cases than those without representation. Yet the majority of detained people – over 70 percent – faced immigration courts without a lawyer in 2021.

In 2022, we offered nearly 200 hours of initial consultations with Luis. Clients who work with him say things like this: “After speaking to Luis Campos for one hour, we have learned more about our case and our options than we’ve learned in a year working with our previous attorney.” They report they are less afraid, more empowered, and better informed about their legal options.

The Alliance is the only organization in Blaine County that takes on asylum cases due to their complicated and time-consuming nature.

Through WRAP, The Alliance offers clients access to low-bono and pro-bono asylum legal services with attorney Luis Campos at a radically reduced rate based on income. The Alliance vigorously protects the human and legal rights of both immigrants and asylum-seekers. These rights are guaranteed by the Constitution, by U.S. statutory law, and by our treaty obligations, no matter what your immigration status is. Our work through Wood River Asylum Project focuses on representing clients seeking asylum in the United States.

Through the Wood River Asylum Project (WRAP), The Alliance empowers our clients and protects their human rights by providing them with access to ethical and affordable legal representation that makes a life-saving difference for families in our community.

WRAP LAB is a cutting-edge approach to asylum cases. Through our team’s work providing direct representation to asylum seekers – people who arrive having survived trauma, who flee because their lives and the lives of their children and their relatives depend on it – we have learned that a new model of direct representation is needed. This new model – now being developed by Luis Campos and our team at The Alliance – would include a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach.

WRAP LABS approach would involve collaboration among: Attorneys and Legal Staff; Mental Health Professionals; and Social Scientists (including Memory and Language Experts, Anthropologists, Sociologists, Political Scientists, and Historians).

In his more than 25 years of experience in immigration law, Luis says he knows “of no law firms or human rights groups that have formally adopted this approach, making it a part of their DNA.” The Alliance will make it part of our DNA – and we will be leaders in asylum law when we take this collaborative approach.

Project Solo is a brand new – and urgently needed – program at The Alliance of Idaho designed to meet the needs of some children who are immigrants in Blaine County. Undocumented immigrant children are an extremely vulnerable population. One way to empower and shelter this precarious group of children is to help them obtain legal permanent residence in the United States.

Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) is an immigration classification designed to protect immigrants under the age of 21 who have been abused, neglected, or abandoned by one or both parents – a situation that is more common in Blaine County than we first realized. SIJS is a way for these children to apply for and obtain legal permanent residence in the United States. Sometimes “abandonment” looks like desperate families sending their children to cross the border alone. Other times it entails one parent bringing children across the border to escape an abusive parent. Of the clients and families The Alliance is currently working with, we know already about six children who would be eligible for this program. And in conversation with Hunger Coalition staff, they listed more than a dozen who would be eligible. As soon as we make our program known to the Blaine County School District, we imagine those numbers will grow exponentially.

Though SIJS is a life-changing classification that has generational impacts, SIJS is not a well utilized option in immigration legal circles due to the fact that it involves the interplay of federal and state law. SIJS requires that immigration attorneys expand their practices to include representing their child clients not only in immigration court but also in state court dependency, delinquency, guardianship, and/or family law proceedings. This is beyond the scope of expertise and capabilities for many organizations.

The Alliance team is committed to serving immigrant children in our community. To do so, we have brought together a working group to help us create this program: two local attorneys (Sam Linnet and Justin McCarthy), our immigration attorney Luis Campos, and our Executive Director Becky Lopez. We have also been studying, researching, and collaborating with other organizations who have created similar programs so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel: Maria Andrade of Immigrant Justice Idaho in Boise, Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), Safe Passage Project, and Equal Justice Initiative.

We are convinced that there are many children in Blaine County who are eligible for this program, but they do not yet know about it. Even our immigration attorney – who was a law professor, who has twenty-five years of immigration experience, did not know about SIJS. An essential part of our job is educating both our team and local families about how to obtain the potential adjustment of status available for their children.