Professor Lenni Benson, Director of Safe Passage Project, was quoted in Filipino Reporter article: “New York City Council Initiative Ensuring All Unaccompanied Minors in NYC Have Lawyers,” written by The Council of the City of New York Office of Communications.
“The New York City Council’s Unaccompanied Minors Initiative – a groundbreaking public-private partnership between the Council, Robin Hood Foundation and the New York Community Trust– is ensuring that unaccompanied minors who make their way to New York City receive much needed help from qualified attorneys. While published reports show that unaccompanied minors across the country continue to face unequal access to legal services, in the six months since its launch, this initiative has provided screenings for virtually every unaccompanied child appearing at the surge and regular juvenile dockets at the New York City immigration court, secured representation for over 400 children, along with much needed social services, and resulted in asylum for four of these children […]
“Safe Passage Project, a pro bono mentoring project jumped in last August to expand its work at the immigration court from one day a month to one day a week. Without the City Council’s support and that of Robin Hood Foundation, the Project could not have met the needs of unrepresented immigrant children,” said Lenni B. Benson, Director of the Safe Passage Project. “With the support we were able to host over twenty free trainings and happily more than 2,000 attorneys participated in one of our trainings on how to provide pro bono representation to immigrant youth. We are thrilled to mentor and expand the pool of excellent attorneys who will be meeting the needs of these unaccompanied youth.””
