Introducing KIND

Microsoft Corporation and the internationally acclaimed actress and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie ask for your support in building a pro bono movement of law firms, corporate law departments and NGOs committed to providing fair, competent and compassionate legal counsel to unaccompanied immigrant children in the U.S. We're calling this new coalition KIND-but it's about more than compassion, it's about protecting the rights of children.

KIND has an ambitious but achievable agenda. By 2010, we intend to provide legal representation for 100% of unaccompanied children-approximately 2100 children a year-in those areas of the country where the need is greatest: Los Angeles, Seattle, Houston and the Northeastern corridor of the U.S. And we'll expand our operations throughout the country based on the "best practices" developed through this first critical phase of work.

Children Alone

They come to the United States for many reasons-to find a family, escape hardship and hopelessness, flee persecution and torture, or even as victims of trafficking for forced prostitution or other illicit purposes.

Each year more than 8000 unaccompanied immigrant children arrive in the United States. The stakes are impossibly high for these kids-if they are apprehended, as most are, they face immigration proceedings and the likelihood of deportation to their country of origin. Some "go underground" to live lives of secrecy and deprivation in a desperate effort to evade U.S. authorities. Others are sent to stay in prison-like detention facilities while they await adversarial legal proceedings and the certain return to the difficult and dangerous circumstances they left behind.

Unlike in most Western industrialized nations, in the United States the government provides no appointed counsel for unaccompanied children in immigration court. As a consequence, the vast majority of unaccompanied children simply do not have a lawyer. Children with limited education and English skills are pitted against trained government attorneys before administrative judges, in a highly complex system of arcane rules with the same standards and burdens of proof as any adult immigrant. Without counsel, they scarcely understand the procedures they face and the options and remedies that may be available to them under the law. Too often, viable claims for protection and relief are poorly developed, or not presented at all. Unaccompanied children need help today-and the U.S. legal community has the resources and talent to provide it.