The Women’s Refugee Commission joined dozens of national and regional organizations advocating for refugee, asylum seeker, and immigrant rights in a written response to the recently-issued Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Request for Information (RFI) for National Case Management Program. We provide here a comment on the issuance of the RFI itself and information regarding principles underlying community support programming.

The letter emphasizes that while interest in community-based programming for those in the immigration process is a welcome development, there is concern over the possibility of connecting community-based services to ICE and ICE funding. The letter details the principles and evidence-based best practices that organizations hope to see inform community-based services in the future, including the importance of housing these services and their funding in a separate agency.