With new office, CHIRLA spreads immigration services to South L.A.
After a year in operation, the new South Los Angeles office for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles has found success in reaching a greater number of clients and better connecting with more marginalized aspects of the immigrant community.
CHIRLA, an organization that provides legal services for immigrants and builds movements for policy change, opened a new satellite office in South Los Angeles in August 2017. The new office was created after Los Angeles City Councilman Curren Price awarded $500,000 to the organization to help expand CHIRLA’s legal services in the current anti-immigrant climate, Price said.
“This is a service that is much needed and which demonstrates our commitment to keeping families together and standing up to unfair and inhumane immigration policies. The city of Los Angeles will continue to lead by example and do what is right to take care of our immigrant communities,” Price said.
The new office is at 4301 South Central Ave., while the main office is located in downtown Los Angeles near MacArthur Park.
Grelia Vegas, regional field coordinator for the South L.A. office, said it’s now easier to reach people living in South L.A.
“Communities in South L.A. were alone,” Vegas said. “They did not have an office to support them or answer their questions. They know we are here and they feel so happy that they do not need to go all the way to downtown.”
Vegas said immigrants living in the area struggled to visit the main office because some could not afford to travel downtown due to jobs and family obligations.
“Here we have a large number of Hispanic people and the percentage of immigrants is huge. CHIRLA being here is a great support for them because we are now next to them,” she said.
Immigrants in South L.A. comprise over a third of the population but have increased slightly during the 2000s, according to a 2011 report from the USC Program for Environmental & Regional Equity. The foreign-born population grew by nearly 15 percent from 269,594 in 1990 to 309,440 in 2009–09, according to the report.
Rebecca Medina, a senior staff attorney at CHIRLA, said moving to the South L.A. office made it easier to do her job because information can now travel further than it would from the downtown office.
After a full year of operation, both Medina and Vegas said the office needs to become better at keeping up with news about immigration policy as well as other legal cases that could decide the fate of many of their clients. For their second year, they want to construct a better network between all immigrants in Los Angeles.
Medina said the need for a stronger information network is a result of the current presidential administration, which is dismantling protections for immigrants at an alarming speed.
“They are on a daily basis almost shifting certain policies or trying to change certain things,” she said. “They are ending programs or ending benefits and shifting benefits that are harsh towards the clients.”
To build that network, the office hopes to make their clients leaders of the immigrant community. That way, there is a stronger connection between the office and its principles for those who need help or counsel.
“We can educate them so they can transfer that information to the others. That is our goal,” Vegas said.
Vegas said CHIRLA should serve as a source of information and as a gathering space to help immigrants serve themselves and their community.
“If we have community members that are educated about their service they can go to their own places and transfer the information to others about what they can do,” she said.
Meanwhile, Medina said she believes that CHIRLA should also receive help from more mainstream television and local news outlets. Medina said the best way for the CHIRLA to reach more people and to stay on top of immigration policy is constant coverage and communication across all levels of society.
“We’re on the news and media a lot, so once the announcements are made that the South L.A. office is going to open we always get people for promotion and recommendations to other clients,” Medina said.
As an immigrant herself, Vegas said she is grateful for the opportunity to work in this specific office because she sees herself as serving the community.
“Doing this job is like giving back to the community myself,” she said. “I’m helping people to change their lives because one piece of information I can give to a family brings them from the dark into the light.”
