Immigrant legal support group has focused recovery plan to overcome service cuts
Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice says it has to cut legal services for immigrants by 1,000 cases but has plans to find new funding
Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice (MMJ) will try to overcome a planned 40% cut in legal services for immigrants with an intentional effort to communicate with clients, staff, its board of directors and — significant in light of funding cuts — private foundations and other donors.
“Like many other nonprofit organizations, we know that we have to diversify where we get our money from, in case something like this happens,” the group’s executive director, Erica Johnson, said in a phone conversation she and I had after the migrant support group announced its cuts last week.
“Something like this” refers to federal funding cuts for immigration services. As we celebrate this week the country immigrants declared 250 years ago, the people in charge of that country are stepping up efforts to clean out immigrants they do not like. Getting rid of the bad actors is fully supportable, but the crackdown includes people caught in a legal vice created by the government, and those people need legal help.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Johnson said. “We know that we have to come out on the other side because our mission is so important, and there’s nowhere else that is doing this work in this state the way Iowa MMJ is.”
Media reports last week told of how federal agencies such as the Office of Refugee Resettlement have pulled two Migrant Movement for Justice contracts for programs that assisted Afghan and Ukrainian refugees seeking entry into the United States. The legal assistance is for Iowa immigrants qualifying for citizenship applications.
The organization received $150,989 in government contracts in 2024, the most recent full year for which its Internal Revenue Service filing exists.
A transparency note here: I support the Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice. Like other nonprofit groups relying on public trust, a critical look at what it does, why and how can be healthy.
“This is something that we have anticipated for a while now,” Johnson said about the federal cuts. This, specifically, has been true the last 18 months, which covers time leading up to and the start of Donald Trump’s presidency and the immigration crackdown he campaigned on en route to his election win over Kamala Harris.
On June 10, Trump signed a bill that gave U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Border Patrol $70 billion over the next three years to expand efforts to reach a Trump goal of removing one million people from the United States each year.
RELATED: IOWA JUDGES TAKE ICE TO TASK OVER ’ASTONISHING CONDUCT’ AND VIOLATIONS OF COURT ORDERS, by Clark Kauffman
Since the signing, observers in eastern Iowa have reported a noticeable increase in ICE activity. ICE agents made verified home raids in Iowa City, Waterloo and Allison, Iowa City Catholic Worker House said in an email sent to its followers on Monday, June 29.
“Increasingly, ICE is targeting immigrants with strong community ties and no criminal records, including people on expired visas and those who may qualify for immigration relief through U.S. citizen or permanent resident family members,” the email stated.
Johnson said nine of Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice’s legal staff no longer will be available for Iowan immigrants seeking help with their citizenship applications and requirements, such as filing petitions, gaining temporary protected status and working through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) requirements. The cuts will result in 1,000 fewer people from the 3,000 annually who can receive the group’s assistance, she said.
The assistance exists because legal costs to continue the legal route to citizenship pile up. A Cedar Rapids man I interviewed for a previous story is in the United States legally but has waited a whopping 20 years and has spent $40,000 to gain citizenship.
You cannot drive home this point enough to people who say they favor immigrants entering the country legally. Costs and the wait create stress not only for those seeking citizenship but those who provide services, ranging from private and nonprofit entities to government agencies. Not being able to grasp the gravity of that is a luxury.
RELATED: HOW IMMIGRANTS, EVEN UNDOCUMENTED, ARE SHORING UP YOUR FINANCIAL FUTURE, By Rehka Basu
TRYING TO REACH DONORS
Fundraising could be a heavy lift when it comes to monster-level, big donors because Iowa is not loaded with them, and those who are get bombarded with requests for money. I ran into that when I led the former nonprofit Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism — IowaWatch. Johnson and the Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice’s board of directors will work in that reality.
Even so, the organization has allies, and some are from Iowa. Philanthropies like the Greater Des Moines Area Community Foundation, GreenState Foundation from North Liberty, NEO Philanthropy from New York state and others have helped.
RELATED: THE PRICE OF CITIZENSHIP JUST WENT UP — BY $570, by Pablo Manríquez
Iowa MMJ raised $1.9 million in 2024 toward its $1.5 million budget, the group’s Internal Revenue Service 990 form for that year shows.“We know that the future of Iowa, the potential for our state to be a prosperous state in the future, depends on immigrants,” Johnson said. “So, we’re working really hard to connect with partners who also understand that.
Iowa’s 204,000 immigrants pump at least $5.2 billion into Iowa’s economy, including $1.8 billion in taxes, and labor for manufacturing, retail and wholesale work, construction, maintenance, food services, domestic services, transportation and landscaping. They have kept meat packing alive in Iowa.
“Immigrants are the only growing segments of rural Iowa’s population,” David Peters, Iowa State University professor and extension state specialist, wrote in a new research paper released June 14, 2026. “Natural decline should have worsened rural population losses. Instead, a surge in immigration boosted population growth.”
Peters leads a team of rural sociologists studying Iowa’s population trends. Iowa’s metro cities are growing, and immigrants are part of the reason, although the metro growth is less dependent on immigrants than in rural areas, the research paper showed.
“I mean, have you driven around small-town Iowa, in certain communities?” Johnson asked, rhetorically. “I grew up in southeast Iowa and brain drain was a constant thing … and it’s still a thing there.”
RELATED: BOLIVIAN IMMIGRANT WANTS TO HELP OTHERS, MAY HAVE DODGED DEPORTATION BACK HOME VIA CONGO
POLITICS IN THE MIX
In many ways, focusing on politics takes attention away from the real concerns, like treating Iowans who came from other countries to live and contribute in your communities humanely and reducing strain on legal, community and government services for a more efficient and effective U.S. immigration policy. Iowans can do that without government.
But we decide public policy with politics, so expect Iowa’s approach to immigrants to be part of this year’s political races in Iowa.
RELATED: PHASE II OF MASS DEPORTATION IS HERE, by Michael Kagan
U.S. Senate candidate Ashley Hinson, a Republican, is all-in on Donald Trump’s policy of deport-first, don’t-bother-with-questions. She has questioned the nonprofit status for Escucha Mi Voz because of training the Catholic-based immigration group does for interacting with law enforcement at public demonstrations. She frequently has declined local clergy requests to meet face-to-face about her immigration stance.
She voted for the $70 billion bill to boost ICE and Border Patrol efforts.
But Democrat Josh Turek will not get an automatic pass from immigration advocates. He will have to explain his 2024 Iowa Legislature vote that helped put Senate File 2340 into law. That law allows state law enforcement officials to help with some immigration law enforcement.
It also makes illegal immigration a state crime ranging from an aggravated misdemeanor to Class C felony, depending upon the circumstances. Penalties would be as high as 10 years in prison and a $13,660 fine for the Class C felony, up to five years and a fine of up to $10,245 for a Class D felony, and up to two years in custody and a fine as high as $8,540 for an aggravated misdemeanor, the law states.
Turek says he opposes inhumane treatment of immigrants and wants to hold ICE agents accountable and supports partisan legislation that creates a simpler path to U.S. citizenship. He also says he wants to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States and deport those who come to the United States illegally and commit crimes.
RELATED: FLEEING HONDURAS’ VIOLENCE TO AN IOWA CHURCH PULPIT: A FAITH JOURNEY
THE FUND DRIVE
Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice was created in early 2021 when the American Friends Service Committee Iowa and Iowa Justice for Our Neighbors merged.
The Friends group was a Quaker organization dating back to 1917, when it was formed nationally to give World War I conscientious objectors an alternative to serving in the military.
An Iowa chapter started in 1935 through the Grinnell International Relations Institute. It helped about 185 Jewish refugees who fled Germany during the Holocaust and ran a Friends Hostel from 1943 to 1946 in Des Moines for Japanese Americans displaced to U.S. internment camps during World War II.
The Justice for Neighbors group was an Iowa United Methodist ministry that already had been offering immigration legal services for 21 years before the merger. The merged effort is part of the United Methodist Church’s national Justice for our Neighbors network.
To contribute to Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice, go to this link.
Lyle Muller is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Check out some of the collaborative’s most recent reporting in this week’s summary.
He also wrote a book.
