A Legacy of Justice
A Legacy of Justice
Sr. Catherine with a client while she was serving at Florida Rural Legal Services.
The legal system can be hard for anyone to navigate but imagine having to do it in a country where you don’t speak the language or understand the process. How would you secure help if you didn’t know where to start?
In 1995, Sr. Catherine Cassidy was working for Florida Rural Legal Services (FRLS) in Ft. Pierce when changes to U.S. immigration law and the funding of legal services offices impacted the way she was able to serve her clients. Funding cuts and restrictions on working with immigrants left FRLS and other organizations with thousands of cases they were no longer permitted to represent.
While looking for a solution to the problem—because leaving thousands of people without representation was unthinkable—Sr. Catherine joined with two other attorneys, Cheryl Little and Sr. Maureen Kelleher, RSHM, to co-found the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center (FIAC). The organization was later renamed Americans for Immigrant Justice (AI Justice). Cheryl was working out of Miami and became the Executive Director of the new organization, and Sr. Maureen was working out of Immokalee.
“We didn’t know how we were going to do it,” Sr. Catherine said. “The [HM] Community helped us incorporate, and I got a grant from the Community through the Salmon fund so I could hire a couple of paralegals, but we started out with nothing and thousands of cases. Eventually we were able to get more funding and work with the Florida Bar Foundation to grow. Later, I did statewide work setting up immigration units in other offices that complied with federal funding regulations.”
Sr. Catherine’s path to becoming an attorney began when she was working in community outreach in Cleveland in the 1960s. Terrible conditions in some of the nursing homes where she provided communion services prompted her to look for attorneys to help address the issues she witnessed. After not having much luck, she finally went to the ACLU and was impressed with the way they were able to assist with the problems. Later, when she was working in pastoral ministry at a local parish, she was offered the opportunity to enroll in law school. A trip to Haiti shaped her desire to serve in a place where she could offer legal services to the poor, which led Sr. Catherine to Florida and put her in the right place to help found FIAC.
Along with helping asylum seekers navigate a complicated immigration system, as it grew FIAC also took on cases that helped shape laws to protect victims of human trafficking and domestic violence and exposed abuses in immigration detention facilities. The organization advocated for sensible immigration policies and reform at a national level, which prompted the name change to AI Justice in 2011.
“You’re not only fighting the bureaucracy, but you’re also fighting the anti-immigrant attitude. I worked with a lot of wonderful attorneys and people from CLINIC [Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc.], Lutheran Legal Service, and Church World Service, and it was a supportive environment. I was constantly amazed by the resilience of the folks with whom I worked,” Sr. Catherine said of her time with AI Justice.
Today, Americans for Immigrant Justice is “an award-winning non-profit law firm that fights for justice for immigrants through a combination of direct representation, impact litigation, advocacy and outreach. In Florida and on a national level, they champion the rights of unaccompanied immigrant children; advocate for survivors of trafficking and domestic violence; serve as a watchdog on immigration detention practices and policies; fight to keep families informed, empowered and together; and pursue redress on behalf of immigrant groups with particular and compelling claims to justice.”
