A handful of impassioned residents attended last week’s Long Beach City Council meeting to speak in support of the city’s Justice Fund, which provides free legal services to local undocumented immigrants.
Gaby Hernandez, executive director with Organizing Rooted in Abolition, Liberation and Empowerment (ÓRALE) was among the group that advocated for the funds, just as she’s done for the past eight years.
Hernandez still possesses the same passion for the Justice Fund as she did when it was established in 2018, but that was not the only reason she attended the Long Beach City Council meeting.
Most of the funds assigned to the Justice Fund are one-time funds, meaning there is no year-to-year guarantee that the City will renew the program.
While Hernandez acknowledged the victory in Long Beach’s $1.4 million allocation to ensure the Justice Fund will operate for the next year, she and other supporters are calling for a longstanding commitment from the city.
“We applaud the City Council for moving forward in allocating the $1 million that has allowed for that expansion,” Hernandez said. “That’s really going to support other services that are not available in Long Beach for immigrant communities. We’re really excited about that, but we want to make sure that it’s not a one-time thing, that it continues to come.”
The 2024 funds that Long Beach approved for the Justice Fund are from the following sources:
- $269,888 in structural funds (established in the budget and guaranteed for a specific purpose) from the Office of Equity
- $500,000 in one-time funds
- $700,000 in Long Beach Recovery Act funds, which expires at the end of 2024. Long Beach Recovery Act money is from the federal government and was given to cities to help the communities most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hernandez also said the money allocated isn’t nearly enough to support the undocumented immigrants population that lives in Long Beach. According to the U.S. Census, roughly 111,000 Long Beach residents identified as immigrants from 2018 to 2022.
The structural funds in the budget go solely towards removal defense services, which is the last step someone faces before they are deported.
Long Beach is currently a “legal desert” for its undocumented residents, since it’s the second largest city in the United States without deportation legal services that undocumented residents can access for free.
Even through the Justice Fund, residents have to be referred to Los Angeles and Orange County organizations, which have the legal support required. The money allocated for the Justice Fund has historically gone to Long Beach organizations to supply Community Connection Services for residents and their families, then refer them outside of Long Beach for legal services.
Community Connection Services is when the local organizations involved in the Justice Fund provide support in a variety of ways to the person affected and their family, such as food services and other programs. These organizations will then refer the person in need of legal services to Al Otro Lado, an organization based in Los Angeles.
Hernandez hopes that structural funding will be allocated to the Justice Fund in the future.
“Everyone’s very supportive of the fund, so it would be very hard for me to believe that the council and the mayor don’t see the importance of this and don’t lean into structural funding,” she said. “I think they understand that it’s going to take a lot of collaboration to get there, but there is no other way. We need these funds.”
Related Reading:
