Meet our new Family Law Attorney, Tarsila.

Meet Tarsila Crawford, our new Family Law Attorney. Throughout 2025, our legal team noticed an emerging issue in immigration law: caregivers, families, and the legal system were facing unprecedented challenges involving family law. Historically, ICE was not detaining parents because it is extremely unpopular and subjects young children, many of whom are US citizens, to separation and trauma. But what we have seen is indiscriminate detentions of community members in urban and rural areas, targeting people heading to work, at work, at their ICE check-ins, and even using children as bait. One case Tarsila has been working on has featured a mother with a medically fragile child and a nursing baby who was detained, even though she has young children that rely on her care, strong community connections, works, and has no criminal record.

Tarsila has also been fielding the growing number of domestic violence cases that are being reported through our Resource Line because our community feels afraid to call law enforcement and report it, citing multiple instances where the abuser called ICE to pick up their partner, or that law enforcement removed the victim from the home because of their status. “I’m developing a training for our Resource line staff to support them as they answer more and more domestic violence calls, developing legal resources that haven’t existed, and representing victims who are being punished by the system,” Tarsila shares. Family separation is a very real fear for our community, which is why we have been working hard to help families find missing loved ones, offer Power of Attorney clinics and consults, and share our Family Preparedness Guide.

Community members share that they are relieved to know what to do and that they can call us, and we will do everything we can to help. Our next goal is to train family law attorneys to understand how immigration and family law intersect and how to support those in vulnerable situations.