Press Release – CHICAGO, IL, and DILLEY, TX: Samantha Lloyd, partner at Coleman Immigration LLC in Chicago, recently volunteered for a week at the South Texas Family Residential Center, the largest immigration detention center in the country, located in Dilley, Texas. The Dilley center opened in 2015 to detain up to 2,400 asylum seeking mothers and children. The center is managed by CoreCivic, formerly CCA, a private corrections management company, on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). From December 4-9, Ms. Lloyd was providing legal assistance to mothers and their children, who have fled death threats, targeted abuse, and widespread violence in Central America. Ms. Lloyd volunteered under the auspices of the Dilley Pro Bono Project, a part of the CARA Family Detention Project. The volunteer attorneys and translators are committed to providing pro bono legal services to these detainees as well as ending the incarceration of immigrant children and their parents, and they urgently need volunteers. Ms. Lloyd felt compelled to respond to the call and fight for the rights of these families.
Ms. Lloyd believes in this political climate it is more important than ever for attorneys to offer pro bono assistance to those in need. “The detention of large numbers of very young children and their mothers is just wrong, and when I learned about the need for volunteer attorneys, especially those who could speak Spanish, I knew I had to help,” she says. Indeed, she was so dedicated to making the journey to Texas that she started a GoFundMe campaign to help finance the project, and the support she received was overwhelming.