What We Do

In order to fuse synergy with action, a positive vision appeared.

In 2009 an application was filed with the United States Department of Justice for MAS to be recognized as a nonprofit religious, charitable, and social service organization pursuant to Title 8, Section 292.2(a) of the Code of Federal Regulations to represent immigrants before Department of Homeland Security, USCIS, and as legal counsel in Immigration Court.

The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) is the codification of the rules by the departments and agencies of the Federal Government. MAS was the first Islamic organization to be accredited by the United States Department of Justice. MAS as an organization has established to the satisfaction of this USDOJ and Board of Immigration Appeals that it has a staff at its disposal with ample knowledge, information, and experience in immigration law and procedure. Its legal immigrant defense program's primary goal is to utilize its Accredited Representative, a person with designated authority, to act on behalf of a person, group, or organization. Its Accredited Representative is chosen based on his or her qualifications. We began with helping immigrants and we help the problems that oppress the immigrants and other people of color. We fight for those facing discrimination and those who are abused. Our project was force to expand our direction to assist those who needed someone to listen and take their problems seriously.

What Is Our Purpose?

The journey of the Muslim in American Society has evolved. Our work is never stagnant. The task of contributing to a movement in nation going forward to achieve political and social consciousness is increasingly developing into more complexing stages. It remains a duty within us, collectively and individually to act and assume a role, as we face more enormous challenges. We are among those who seek freedom, equality, fairness, and better lives for ourselves, our families, and society by contributing to the completion of successful tasks. Until we created a path that is unbroken and unrestrained by weakness and indifference, we remain deterred from our goal from "enjoining what is good and forbidding what is evil.".

The justice project another tool "to develop and assist others in achieving human rights that are gifts from our Creator that empower each individual with the skills to survive and fulfill their purpose as people developing a better society. Part of the path that the Muslim community is obligated to join is, carving out its steps to protecting democracy.

Democracy is not an easy process. Many nations have failed to accomplish it. Maintaining it requires that we increase our efforts. Our social justice project was built on a foundation that recognizes the full equality of all people and the full necessity of equal effort.

We protect the rights of immigrants, the poor, the underrepresented -- not because it is economically advantageous, not only because the laws of God command it, not because men, want us to. We help those who cannot help themselves because it is merely the correct course to take, and because we remained confident in "enjoining what is good."

Our work provides legal services for minimal fees to indigent immigrants, we advocate, and community outreach and education. We safeguard legal rights, unite families, protect abused, abandoned, and neglected children, and give immigrants hope for a better life. MAS Immigrant Justice Center helps:

Children and adult immigrant victims of human trafficking, domestic violence, sexual assault, and other victims of violent crimes escape their abusive situation and start a safe life through immigrant crime victim visas.
Children and youth who have been abused, neglected, or abandoned apply for permanent immigration status through special immigrant juvenile visas.
Families by keeping them together or helping them reunite. We provide assistance with family visas and limited assistance in removal hearings.
Legal permanent residents to become U.S. citizens through naturalization.
Immigrants with limited English proficiency by informing them and advocating for them to ensure their rights to equal access to government and government-funded services.

We also provide community outreach and education. Our work includes bringing awareness to limited English proficient immigrant communities about issues such as domestic violence and sexual assault. Projects to specific immigrant communities help ensure outreach and education is completed in culturally and linguistically appropriate ways. We protect and dissent in front of a crowd or directly with those who represent us.

Our immigration team is here to listen to you.

Our team proudly serve the immigrant communities throughout the country by assisting non-United States citizens in obtaining lawful status in the United States. We enjoy tremendous success in all employment-based and family-based petitions and have an unsurpassed 99% approval rating on visa applications. We pride ourselves on our professionalism and our ability to obtain results for our clients where other law firms have failed.

What distinguishes our service from is our personalized attention to solving our clients' problems. We strive to provide each client with successful results by considering all appropriate and creative options.

The Most Pivotal Issue: Giving Hope Where it’s Needed

MASJD is dedicated to ensuring human rights protections and access to justice for all people. MASJD provides legal services to more than 2,000 individuals each year and maintains a success rate of 98 percent in obtaining asylum for those fleeing persecution in their home countries. Many immigrants can’t afford private attorneys. MASJD Justice Center is a resource and legal assistance center that offers low-cost, quality services in the form of consultations, trainings, and representation. Most of our clients say they never would have been able to afford a lawyer on their own.

MASJD continues its commitment to the immigrant community by offering its manuals to attorneys, paralegals, legal service workers, criminal defense attorneys, social workers, and community-based advocates. Partnerships with grassroots organization have led to leadership training, social change organizing, and other community-based work focused on increasing the civic capacity of newcomers to address the laws and policies that affect their daily lives.

Fifty years ago, the landmark case Gideon v.

Wainwright required state courts to provide counsel in

criminal cases for defendants who could not afford lawyers. But people who are detained do not typically have lawyers because immigration law, unlike criminal law, does not provide a right to counsel. Immigrant detainees can hire lawyers, but often, they cannot afford counsel or are shuffled through the system before they have a chance to find help.

MASJD has become home to an overwhelming number of immigrants in removal proceedings who desperately need legal advice and representation. These immigrants face seemingly insurmountable obstacles when placed in removal proceedings or when proving their asylum claims, including language barriers, and the complexities of U.S. immigration law and court procedures. Those with limited financial resources are at the highest risk of being deported. As a result, with are intervention many are not separated from their families here in the United States and are not forced to return to places where they may face persecution and even death based upon their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. They give their trust and we give them justice.

MASJD Immigrant Children’s Protection Network

The MAS Immigrant Children’s Protection Network represents and advocates for detained and non-detained immigrant children who face the possibility of deportation to a dangerous homeland. Each year, tens of thousands of children arrive in the United States without a parent or guardian. Denied their

childhood, many minors come to escape violent gang recruitment, acute poverty, abusive labor conditions, forced recruitment as child soldiers, forced child marriages, and female genital mutilation.

Kids without lawyers are more likely to be expelled from the country than children with legal representation, data show. But other parents – many with only a grade-school education and little or no knowledge of English or the U.S. legal system – are left to fend for themselves More than 100,000 cases involving unaccompanied minors have been filed in immigration court since fiscal 2012, when the surge in the number of Central American children crossing the border began. Our clients include children from Mexico, Honduras, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Nepal, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, China, and Kenya.

Unaccompanied minors in immigration proceedings, like all immigrants in this situation, do not have access to court-appointed counsel. More than half of the estimated 10,000 children per year entangled in the U.S. immigration system go through their hearings without legal representation. MASIJC works with a strong network of pro bono attorneys to ensure that every child who comes before the Chicago immigration court has access to legal counsel.

MASJD and its local and national partners collaborate to develop strategies that advocate for systemic change, identify gaps in the system, and propose recommendations for reform. MASJD meets frequently with federal government officials to educate them about the necessity of legal counsel for minors, both accompanied and unaccompanied.

Our legal center has joined with other human rights advocates who share strategies and develop models to help children understand their rights and pursue legal protections. We are currently focus on reaching an estimated 57,000 unaccompanied immigrant children who fled gang- and gender-based persecution Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, and those seeking relief from the war in Syria and Iraq, and who have passed preliminary screenings to show they may be eligible for protection under U.S. law. Many of the young clients are now are reunited with family members.

Most of the children who arrived last year remain at risk of deportation to places where they face persecution, and they desperately need legal representative to navigate a complex legal system that most adults struggle to understand.

The day-to-day logistics of representing unaccompanied children on this scale is complicated even for organizations that have done this work for decades. We have some of the country’s top immigration experts working together to improve how we work, including creating best practices for how to communicate with children and their families throughout the process and to help them play an active role in their cases.