Since October 2021, CWS Jersey City has resettled over 217 Afghan nationals. Clients were evacuated from Afghanistan in August via Operation Allies Welcome (OAW) due to their involvement with the United States military or a contracting agency. All our clients have been provided with social services through the Afghan Placement Assistance (APA) Program, following the core service guidelines provided by the State Department’s cooperative agreement.

These services include safe and sanitary housing, access to public benefits such as SNAP, TANF, and Medicaid, seasonally appropriate clothing, employment assistance and school enrollment for minors (please see attached APA Cooperative Agreement for the full list of core services). The APA program lasts for 90 days, after which we provide a range of continuing services to our clients. While legal services are not a core requirement of our program, we seek to ensure that all clients who wish to remain permanently in the United States have access to either representation or legal assistance.

Our clients are currently legally in the United States with humanitarian parole that lasts for two years, until August 2023. The CWS Jersey City legal department seeks to provide APA clients with assistance to apply for immigration status that offers a path to permanent residency. Since Afghan Parolees are not in removal (deportation) proceedings before an immigration court, they apply for asylum affirmatively, before U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). We anticipate needing to submit about 80 affirmative asylum applications (including spouses and children) to USCIS over the next 1-2 years. We are beginning our first round of the Application Assistance Project in June 2022, but we plan to have further cycles moving forward.

CWS Jersey City has one staff attorney. We do not have the capacity to represent all of our clients at their asylum interviews, and we want to make sure that they are able to at least get this representation for such a crucial part of the asylum process. Though asylum interviews do not require an attorney, it is very important that this population has representation as their have been reports of some Afghan asylum seekers being heavily questioned on potential bars to asylum.

Our office is hosting a pro se asylum clinic program where, with the assistance of volunteers, client participants will put together an asylum application packet. These packets will undergo review by CWS Immigration Staff Attorney. Thus, for this project, the pro bono attorney would pick up from there. CWS will be sending out the applications, but shortly before doing so, the goal is to have an attorney for each client who will assist with interview preparation and interview representation. The Newark asylum office has a location in Newark at 100 Mulberry Street, Suite 199, Newark, NJ, 07102, and it also has a Manhattan branch at 201 Varick Street, Sixth Floor, Suite 629, New York, NY 10014.