South Brooklyn Sanctuary grew out of the grassroots, volunteer-run legal advocacy program led by Father Juan Carlos Ruiz at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Juan Carlos has been a leader in the Sanctuary movement in New York and New Jersey for over twenty years. In 2001, he co-founded Wind of the Spirit, a faith-based organization that extends hospitality to immigrants, and in 2007 he co-founded New Sanctuary Coalition, which provided legal services to people facing detention and deportation and sought to address the deeper systemic issues of racism and xenophobia.

 

In Spring 2022, when Texas Governor Greg Abbott first bused migrants from the southern border to New York City, volunteers at Juan Carlos' church launched a weekly walk-in legal advocacy program. Volunteers do not offer legal advice but support people to better understand the legal process, navigate the city’s network of legal service providers and complete their own legal forms. Volunteers meet with approximately 50 people at the church each week and follow up by phone and email. We have supported over 5000 people to date. To accommodate our growth, we now host a weekly “by appointment” clinic in downtown Brooklyn, where a storefront lends us their space after business hours.  

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We imagine an inclusive immigration system that offers protection, not punishment. Ideally, each person in immigration proceedings would have access to quality representation. In reality, immigrants are facing an adversarial system without the right to a lawyer, and more than 60% of immigrants in New York State are battling their cases alone. Data reflects that these case outcomes are overwhelmingly negative. Pro-se program’s like South Brooklyn Sanctuary—which empower people to represent themselves—are essential to filling the justice gap.