One year after launch, Vermonters meet the $1 million goal; final grant award advances innovative partnership and sector sustainability.
Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Immigration Legal Defense Fund has surpassed its $1 million fundraising goal and announced its fifth and final round of grants.
Launched in May 2025, the Fund raised $1 million in a year through generous contributions from thousands of Vermonters across all 14 counties. In addition, donations were received from 39 states, underscoring Vermont’s leadership in this work nationally. This milestone represents a grassroots effort reflecting Vermonters’ motivation to uphold the right to due process for all persons as it is enshrined in the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution.
United Way of Northwest Vermont administered the Fund and quickly distributed grants to key community-based partners leading Vermont’s immigration legal defense fund work. In total, five rounds of grants were made from the over $1 million raised, supporting:
- Vermont Asylum Assistance Project (VAAP)
- AALV (formerly the Association of Africans Living in Vermont)
- Vermont Legal Aid (VLA; via VAAP)
- Vermont Afghan Alliance (VAA)
- The Janet S. Munt Family Room
- Center for Justice Reform Clinic at the Vermont Law and Graduate School (CJRC)
Yacouba Jacob Bogre, Executive Director of AALV shared, “Over the past year, these funds have strengthened our ability to provide critical legal services and to work collaboratively across organizations to meet the growing needs of immigrant communities. The legacy of this Fund is the partnerships it has strengthened and the families it has supported. We remain committed to ensuring that every person in Vermont is treated with dignity and provided with due process.”
“When we launched the Defense Fund a year ago, raising $1 million felt ambitious. But Vermonters stepped forward and met the moment. Thousands of people across our state stood up for immigrant communities when they needed it most—that’s the magic of Vermont,” said State Treasurer Mike Pieciak, who founded the Fund in his personal capacity. "This final award, and the partnership it helps create, means that what we’ve built together won’t simply disappear when the Fund concludes. It will continue through the people and organizations carrying this work forward. I am deeply grateful to every Vermonter who donated to defend the values of dignity, fairness, and due process, and to everyone who continues to stand up for their neighbors in the face of injustice."
Strengthening and Sustaining Vermont’s Immigration Legal Defense Network
The final grant of more than $100,000 will be awarded to VAAP to support collaborative service delivery through the Vermont Immigration Legal Services Roundtable, an emerging partnership among all five of Vermont’s nonprofit immigration legal service providers: VAAP, AALV, VLA, VAA, and CJRC.
One such collaboration is the VLA-VAAP Immigration Community Lawyering Initiative launched earlier this year, which marked VLA’s first foray into direct immigration legal service delivery. The initiative expands access to counsel by recruiting and mentoring new immigration lawyers to serve previously unrepresented clients from the offices of trusted community-based organizations in central and southern Vermont, with nationally vetted training and legal technical assistance from VAAP. The initiative has enabled VLA to provide high-quality immigration defense representation to 32 noncitizen Vermont families who previously lacked counsel, while preserving VAAP attorney capacity to directly represent more than 50 additional families during the same period. Legal service partners hope to build on this success by expanding the model into a northern catchment area in partnership with an early-career immigration lawyer at Vermont Afghan Alliance.
The grant will also support long-term planning to strengthen and sustain Vermont’s immigration legal defense network. With support from the Fund and many others, Vermont’s nonprofit immigration legal services sector has grown from just two full-time equivalent direct service providers in 2024 to its current capacity of 13. Together, these attorneys coordinate and innovate to deliver an increasingly complex range of preventive and responsive legal services to a growing population of people at risk of detention, deportation, and family separation.
The network services individuals and families across dozens of language groups and all 14 Vermont counties. Clients include noncitizens detained by ICE in Vermont and, at times, Vermonters detained by ICE as far away as Michigan and Louisiana. Their services have secured the release of dozens of noncitizens from unlawful ICE custody on bail or bond and helped hundreds more preserve their claims to legal status and protection from unlawful removal.
Volunteer Advisory Committee members, Sue Minter and Patti Komline, who worked together with Pieciak to establish and grow the Fund, agreed. "At a time when the headlines have left many feeling powerless, this effort gave thousands of people a meaningful way to respond. Mr. Rogers told us to 'look for the helpers.' Across Vermont and across the country, people answered that call, stepping forward with generosity, resolve, and hope to support the Fund."
“Reaching this goal is a testament to what Vermonters can do when they refuse to look away,” said State Senator Kesha Ram-Hinsdale, who helped launch the Fund in her personal capacity as well. “Just as important as the dollars raised is the plan we leave behind—one that ensures people facing detention or separation will not navigate it alone.”
To anchor the transition, VAAP and United Way of Northwest Vermont will collaborate on a long-term model for sustaining immigration legal defense services statewide.
“This award catalyzes the Immigration Community Lawyering Initiative we launched with Vermont Legal Aid and invests in the long-term health of the whole sector,” said VAAP Executive Director Jill Martin Diaz. “The Fund gave Vermont a year to build. Our job now is to make that capacity permanent, and this support—together with United Way’s partnership—makes that possible.”
“Vermonters have always shown up for one another, and the success of this Fund is no exception,” said Jesse Bridges, CEO of United Way of Northwest Vermont. “As fiscal sponsor and through our partnership with VAAP, United Way is helping ensure this work carries forward.”
The Fund will remain open for contributions before formally transitioning into this next phase.
6.15.2026. Burlington, VT — For more information, visit: https://www.vermontlegaldefensefund.com
To support vital journalism, access our archives and get unique features like our award-winning profiles, Book of Lists & Business-to-Business Directory, subscribe HERE!
Vermont Business Magazine