On Tuesday, December 3, 2024, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the ACLU of Louisiana, and the Southeast Dignity Not Detention Coalition hosted a webinar to explain how emergency federal court litigation together with community organizing can be used to defend immigrant communities during the incoming Trump administration.

During our one-hour webinar, the hosts discussed how to fight back against imminent deportation and detention through temporary restraining orders, preliminary injunctions, and other individual-case litigation in conjunction with organizing strategies like coalition-building, political education & awareness campaigns, release campaigns, establishing detention visitation networks, and grassroots advocacy programs.

During the webinar, participants learned:

• The nuts-and-bolts of how to seek emergency relief from federal courts, including where to access template legal filings;
• How to identify facts to support legal claims to stop deportation, including in cases where people are facing retaliation for activism; awaiting adjudication of a visa before USCIS; have severe medical or mental health issues; have a claim to unaccompanied child status; or were ensnared by illegal enforcement practices during work-site and other raids; and
• How lawyers and grassroots organizers can collaborate on individual campaigns to stop deportation and in longer-term movements to hold the US government accountable for systemic human rights abuses.

Click here to access the slides used during the webinar, and see below for the sample templates featured in the presentation: