Keep on Climbing: Advocacy in 2025
CLINIC’s Advocacy team had a steep hill to climb in 2025. With the onslaught of policy changes, and many of their regular federal administrative advocacy channels shut down, they shifted more of their focus to community education and ensuring CLINIC’s voice remained part of the public record. They also doubled down on their state and local-level advocacy work.
In a typical year, the members of CLINIC’s advocacy team spend much of their time liaising with federal agencies to help CLINIC Affiliates access smoother and more timely immigration services. But with the second Trump administration, nearly all communication channels were closed.
“In 2025, the administration dismantled communication efforts with stakeholders,” Pedro Alemán Perfecto, policy advocate, explained. There were no stakeholder conversations initiated, email inquiries were ignored, and the major government offices for oversight of the immigration system were quietly shut down.
However, CLINIC’s team kept up the work of submitting sign on letters, public comments, and other written records of opposition to policies which were harming immigrants. “It was critical that we kept submitting things to the public record,” said Karen Sullivan, CLINIC’s director of advocacy. “That way in the future, it will be known that we registered the grave issues we see in the field due to policy changes.”
They continued their coalition work with other partners in the advocacy sphere, which focuses on specific topics critical to the CLINIC network, such as the naturalization process, access to the Department of Justice Recognition and Accreditation (DOJ R&A) program, and Temporary Protected Status. While all of those policy areas saw negative developments in 2025, the team felt encouraged by the commitment of partners to documenting the harm to immigrant communities of changes like TPS revocations, heightened difficulty of gaining citizenship, and slower processing of DOJ R&A applications and renewals. They and their partners doubled down on data collection through surveys and communication with directly impacted clients, which they say will be helpful for future advocacy.
DOJ R&A is a government program that gives authorization to non-attorneys working at nonprofits organizations to practice certain forms of immigration law, after receiving rigorous training and mentorship. Once approved, these representatives are known as DOJ Accredited Representatives.
The other major area of focus was on community education.
“In addition to our Know Your Rights materials, which are aimed at immigrants themselves, we saw a hunger for materials on how community members and allies could support immigrants too,” explained Karen Sullivan. So the team worked on updating and creating new materials for advocacy and accompaniment by the broader community, including a resource on courthouse advocacy and on how to visit immigrants in detention.
Viviana Westbrook, CLINIC’s state and local advocacy attorney, spent a lot of time doing trainings on Know Your Rights in the DC-Maryland area and for virtual audiences. “Every time I did a training, I had to adapt the material, because the changes in law and policy were happening so fast,” she recalled.
Westbrook said that while there were a lot of harmful state-level bills introduced in 2025, there was also fierce advocacy by Affiliates and other community-legal groups that allowed for sometimes surprising wins in blocking bills’ passage or curtailing their negative impact. “I was really proud of the creative, passionate advocacy we supported and witnessed in the field last year,” said Westbrook.
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