The Legal Aid Society announced today that the Immigration Law Unit will expand their immigration helpline, which provides essential legal assistance to immigrant New Yorkers and their families, to operate 7 days a week to aid impacted individuals in the face of the Trump Administration’s pending raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The helpline, 1-844-955-3425, will now run every day from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. ET, with the possibility of being extended for additional hours based on call volume.

“We see this latest Trump attack for what it is: an attempt to resurrect his failed family separation policy from last summer and a re-election tactic to excite his base,” said Hasan Shafiqullah, Attorney-in-Charge of the Immigration Law Unit at The Legal Aid Society. “We stand with our immigrant communities and welcome all those in need of legal support in this dark time.”

Non-citizen New Yorkers detained by ICE at the Bergen and Hudson County Jails in New Jersey, and Orange County Jail in New York, and/or their family members, may call the helpline for advice and possible legal representation on their cases. Immigrants detained at other immigration detention facilities and in upstate New York prisons and/or their family members can call the hotline for advice only. Collect calls from detention facilities and prisons are accepted.

Trump’s new family separation policy seeks to target undocumented families with final orders of removal, many of whom may have viable claims for relief but who have simply missed a court date. There are a myriad of reasons why an individual might miss their removal court hearing that are beyond their control: failure to receive proper notice of the removal hearing date; extraordinary circumstances like serious illness that prevented them from appearing; or even arriving just a few minutes late could result in a judge issuing an order of removal in their absence.

For Know Your Rights materials, visit the Immigrant Defense Project. The immigration helpline is staffed by volunteers from Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP; Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP; Proskauer Rose LLP; Shearman & Sterling LLP; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP; and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.