BEFORE CONTACTING US FOR HELP, PLEASE READ THIS:
WHO SHOULD CONTACT US?
You can contact us if you need help with an immigration case and you were threatened, abused or severely harmed in your home country, or if you are afraid that this will happen to you if you are sent back to your home country. Please answer the questions below and wait for us to contact you. Please be patient because we have no staff – only volunteers.
If you are helping someone who has been threatened or severely harmed or who is afraid that someone will severely harm them if they return to their home country, please be sure they understand and agree with everything on this page. Then, please answer the questions for that person.
Please request our help ONLY if all five of these things are true: the person …
- is living or soon to be living in Arizona,
- is unable to pay or raise enough money to hire a lawyer,
- does not already have a lawyer for their case,
- is not in prison or immigration custody (detention), and
- is seeking protection from harm in another country.
CONFIDENTIALITY – What you tell us (the Asylum Program of Arizona” or “APA”) is secret. We won’t tell anyone else what you tell us unless you say that it’s okay. In some rare (unusual) cases – like if you tell us you are about to seriously harm someone – the rules for lawyers may require us to tell someone. But the rules for lawyers were made so that you could feel safe telling private, personal information to a lawyer and we follow the rules.
YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE ASYLUM PROGRAM OF ARIZONA (APA) – If it seems that we might be able to help you, we will interview you to get more information. After the interview, if our group decides to try to help you, we will not go with you to court. Instead, we will try to find a lawyer who can help you with the paperwork and go with you to court. That person would be your lawyer – not the APA.
If we do find a lawyer for you, we will pay part of the lawyer’s fee, but you will probably have to make payments to pay the rest of the fee over time.