Responding in Real Time: CLINIC’s Emerging Issues Team

In the first part of 2025, amid an onslaught of rapid immigration policy changes, heightened enforcement operations, threats to due process of law, and funding losses across the network, the CLINIC team was scrambling to keep up and inform the network of how best to serve immigrant clients in this environment.

To CLINIC program staff, it sometimes felt impossible to find the time to wade through the thousands of pages of law and policy changes that were being published while sustaining the typical daily work of training and supporting the network of Affiliates, many of whom were contacting them regularly with urgent requests for assistance.

In response, in the summer of 2025 CLINIC decided to hire four new employees to form a new team: the Emerging Issues team. This team was to be wholly focused on responding to the multifold challenges thrown at the network by the new administration.

The team members came with extensive experience. They were Adriana Coppola, the team’s supervisor, a former Catholic Charities legal services director; Kristin de la Vega, litigation attorney, who formerly worked for the federal government; Kathryn Hogg, rapid response attorney, who formerly served at a Kentucky-based refugee agency; and Sandy Pineda, rapid response advocate, who has worked as a DOJ Accredited Representative.

Coppola reflected on what it was like to come onboard at such a time. “We were building the plane while flying it, trying to respond in real time to the needs of the network,” she explained.

“Right from the start, we were translating what was happening for Affiliates, helping them cut through the noise and understand what mattered for their practice. It helped that we were all coming from [direct practice], so we knew how it felt to be working with clients and trying to respond.”

“Everything felt so urgent and lifechanging,” said Kathryn Hogg. “But it felt really good to be able to leverage our experience on the ground to then share it out across the network. Instead of individually helping clients, which is really rewarding, we had a different kind of impact here.”

“We were so grateful for the support of the EI team,” said Jen Riddle, Training and Technical Assistance department director. “They immediately were able to lift some of the burden off our shoulders so we could focus on our training work. They have been so diligent and dedicated to interpreting and explaining the policy changes for our network; it has been an enormous help.”

The team has created new resources and improved old processes to establish clearer communications for Affiliates on the latest changes to their practice. This has included a new offering, called “Field Alerts,” which breaks down a policy shift in simple terms and explains the immediate takeaways for legal practice. They have also hosted webinars to inform the network of litigation and policy shifts.

“We continue to get great feedback from the network about how comforting and reassuring it is to have CLINIC there for them in this tough time,” said Coppola. “I remember one comment we got from an Affiliate was that CLINIC was their ‘backbone.’ That was great to hear.”