The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights is a national organization dedicated to protecting and advancing the rights and best interests—safety and well-being—of immigrant children in the United States. From ten sites around the country and through a variety of programmatic efforts, we work to ensure that children in immigrant families are safe, free, and with their families in community. The Young Center’s Child Advocate Program (CAP) serves as the federally-appointed bests interests representative for unaccompanied and separated immigrant children in federal custody. Through CAP’s state initiative, we also serve and are appointed by the Superior Courts of New Jersey as independent Child Advocates to children released from federal custody into the New Jersey community. Child Advocates meet with children and learn their stories in order to identify and advocate for their best interests through an interdisciplinary, trauma-informed, and culturally sensitive lens. The Young Center’s Policy Program fights for wholesale reform of the immigration system while pursuing immediate changes in policy and practice that center children’s rights and best interests in all decisions. Our Litigation Program engages in impact litigation to advance systemic change and policies that promote the safety, well-being, and best interests of immigrant children.

The Young Center currently seeks a PILI Fellow for its Technical Assistance Program (TAP), which offers intersectional expertise and critical resources to advocates and service providers working with immigrant children and families impacted by state child welfare proceedings. We consult with attorneys, caseworkers, and agency officials to help ensure immigrant children in foster care have equitable access to family, services, and freedom from system involvement. In response to the current immigration enforcement environment, TAP has also developed projects advising detained parents making plans for the care and custody of their children and, where parents are deported without their children, facilitating international reunifications.

Depending on an individual’s own goals and abilities, a PILI Fellow with TAP will have the opportunity to research and draft memos around issues at the intersection of state child welfare and immigration law, support detained parents developing care plans for their children, attend court hearings and various coalition meetings, and participate in internal case rounds and team meetings. The Young Center’s objective is to provide participants with a challenging learning experience, while obtaining high quality work product in order to fulfill the Young Center’s goal of ensuring the best interest of immigrant children in the United States. Fluency in Spanish is preferred but not required.

This agency is approved to host Graduate Fellows.