Your Donation Doubled: Join Ariana Grande in showing up for our neighbors and your donation will be matched up to $400,000!

In the news

I lost my parents to the immigration system. Now youth like me lead the fight.

Immigrant youth know what people facing deportation need most: lawyers. So they built a $15 million legal defense fund and a new model for rapid-response philanthropy. The future of philanthropy is not being invented in boardrooms. It is being built by young people sitting in immigration court hallways trying to find lawyers for their parents. By students raising bond money after classmates disappear into detention. By immigrant communities creating emergency-response networks because they know institutions won’t arrive fast enough to save them. For immigrant youth, philanthropy is not an intellectual exercise. It is survival infrastructure. For me, this is personal — I was one of those youth myself. As a teenager, I witnessed my father, Luis, deported to Mexico after local law enforcement officers in Texas racially profiled him. He later died in exile in 2024. My mother, Elia, died because she was unable to access adequate cancer treatment due to her undocumented status. Today I lead United We Dream, the nation’s largest immigrant youth-led organization. As the Trump administration carries out the most sweeping

Read More »

An Assault on Due Process: Frontline Legal Service Providers Sound the Alarm as the Collapse of Legal Representation for Thousands of Unaccompanied Children Nears

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEWednesday, July 29, 2026 Media Contactspress@unitedwedream.org NATIONAL– Today, in a press briefing hosted by the Defending Our Neighbors Fund, frontline legal service providers across the country warned that legal representation for thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children is at risk of total collapse as the federal contract that funds immigrant children’s access to lawyers expires on July 31, 2026. Since November 2025, the Trump Administration has withheld payment from legal service providers representing unaccompanied children in an effort to force them to turn over sensitive, privileged information about the children they represent. In response, the Defending Our Neighbors Fund has provided emergency funding to support several frontline legal service providers’ ability to continue representing their clients; however, without immediate federal action to renew the federal contract, tens of thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children are at imminent risk of losing access to legal representation and will be forced to self-represent against trained government attorneys.  Please click here to access a recording of today’s press call.  Michael Lukens, Executive Director of the Amica Center for Immigrant

Read More »

Defending Our Neighbors Fund Leader Greisa Martínez Rosas Announced to TIME100 Most Influential People Shaping Philanthropy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEThursday, May 14, 2026 Media Contactspress@unitedwedream.org Washington, D.C. — Today, TIME named Greisa Martínez Rosas, Executive Director of United We Dream and one of the leaders behind the development and creation of the Defending Our Neighbors Fund, to its second-annual 2026 TIME100 Philanthropy list. The list recognizes leaders across the country who are shaping the future of giving and honors Ms. Martinez Rosas’ vital leadership in the launch of the historic multi-million-dollar Defending Our Neighbors Fund. The Fund was created in partnership with the ACLU and Abundant Futures Fund and has raised $15 million and counting to urgently expand legal defense for immigrant families facing separation, detention, and deportation. The full list will appear in the May 25, 2026 issue of TIME, available on newsstands on Friday, May 15, and now online at ti.me/100-philanthropy. Describing Greisa Martínez Rosas, TIME wrote: “Greisa Martínez Rosas is an ‘unafraid’ and ‘unashamed’ immigrant who arrived in the U.S. as a child, and she brings that lived experience to her role at the helm of United We Dream.” “Last

Read More »

How to help immigrant communities in Minneapolis and beyond: Support the Defending Our Neighbors Fund

By Greisa Martinez-Rosas The horrors we’ve seen unfold in Minneapolis are a predictable escalation of an administration that has encouraged reckless, militarized immigration enforcement with little accountability or regard for due process. As enforcement becomes more extreme, access to legal help is disappearing. In immigration court, there is no guaranteed right to a lawyer. Parents facing deportation, and permanent separation from their children, are expected to represent themselves against trained government attorneys. Even children can be forced to appear in court alone. That is why United We Dream, the ACLU, and the Abundant Futures Fund launched the Defending Our Neighbors Fund — and why support for it is urgently needed right now. I know these stakes personally. When I was a child, my father was detained at a traffic stop. My family could not afford a lawyer, and my dad was deported. That brutal experience shaped my life and informs the work I do every day. The outcomes are not a mystery. People with lawyers are far more likely to stay with their families, while

Read More »

Unaccompanied Migrant Children Being Sent To Texas Border To Be Deported, Lawyers Say

The Trump administration is sending dozens of unaccompanied migrant children to the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas to await deportation, Border Report has learned. About 50 children have been sent to the region from the interior of the U.S. in the past few months and are being held in four detention facilities operated by the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), Laura Peña, director of the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project, or ProBar, said Tuesday…

Read More »

Madi Diaz Re-Recorded Blink-182’s ‘Enema of the State’ To Benefit Immigration Legal Aid

Madi Diaz pulled double duty while recording her recently released seventh album, Fatal Optimist. In addition to laying down her own songs, the singer also recorded a track-by-track cover of Blink-182’s breakthrough 1999 album, Enema of the State. “These recordings started out as a fun exercise fueled by the love and fandom I have for blink-182 and the record Enema Of The State,” Diaz wrote in an Instagram post on Monday…

Read More »

This Winter, Give the Gift of Hope

Right now, all over the country, immigrants are at risk of detention, deportation, and family separation. Too often they have no access to legal representation, even if they are children. This fund, a project of the ACLU and other groups, aims to remedy that. Lawyers to the rescue…

Read More »

Madi Diaz Releases Blink-182 Covers Album for Charity: Listen

Madi Diaz has released a full-album cover of Blink-182’s Enema of the State to support the Defending Our Neighbors Fund. Titled Enema of the Garden State, Diaz’s album is available exclusively on Bandcamp, via Anti-. Listen to “Don’t Leave Me” and “Anthem” below and click through to buy the album on Bandcamp…

Read More »

La ACLU Lanza Un Fondo Millonario Para Ayudar A Familias De Detenidos Y Deportados

En medio de los ataques de la Administración Trump, diversas organizaciones buscan encontrar la forma de apoyar a las familias de inmigrantes que lo necesitan. En ese contexto, la Unión Americana por las Libertades Civiles, United We Dream (UWD) y Abundant Futures Fund (AFF) han lanzado el Defending our Neighbors Fund (Defendiendo a nuestros vecinos), una iniciativa que podrá servir como un apoyo clave financiero para aquellos que lo necesiten debido a las medidas severas contra los inmigrantes…

Read More »

Grupos Que Ayudan A Inmigrantes Integrarán Un Fondo De $30 Millones De Dólares Para Apoyar Su Defensa Legal

on el objetivo de respaldar a familias de inmigrantes viviendo en Estados Unidos que luchan en contra de su detención y posterior deportación a sus naciones de origen, las organizaciones United We Dream (UWD), Unión Americana por las Libertades Civiles (ACLU) y Abundant Futures Fund (AFF), crearon un fondo destinado a brindarles abogados y asesoría legal para defenderse en tribunales. El Fondo Defending Our Neighbors, con sede en AFF, actualmente asciende a $10 millones de dólares, pero su meta consiste en llegar a triplicarse en poco tiempo…

Read More »

Members of the media looking to learn more about the Defending Our Neighbors Fund, please contact us at press@defendingourneighbors.org.