Our Mission
Mabel Center for Immigrant Justice’s mission is to provide expert pro bono legal services to asylum-seeking families that have been separated, detained in family detention centers, and/ or subjected to expedited removal through the dedicated docket.
Mabel Center is justice in action. We believe that every human - regardless of status or place of origin - deserves the dignity and respect of legal representation.
That’s why we take on tough and complex asylum cases, representing women and children whose strength and resilience have allowed them to survive unimaginable violence in pursuit of safety in the United States.
Our History
Mabel Center founders developed the Family Detention Project within a legal services organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Through the two-year project, they helped 130 mothers, fathers, and children fleeing persecution in Central America file their asylum cases with the Boston Immigration Court. With the urgent need for free and experienced representation expanding — while its accessibility diminishes under increasingly onerous asylum laws and procedures — Mabel Center’s founding attorneys decided to use their experience and specialized knowledge to create an organization dedicated to the skillful and efficient representation of complex and urgent asylum cases and assisting pro se asylum seekers. Mabel Center received its 501(c)(3) status in June of 2020.