Clients seeking help from M.I.R.A. Resources, a Lehigh Valley nonprofit that connects migrants, immigrants, refugees and asylees with food, housing, legal help and ESL courses, have more than tripled since 2024, even as the organization operates entirely on volunteerism and crowdsourcing, without any designated categorical or block grant from the government or corporations.
The group served 606 people in the first quarter of 2024. That number climbed to 1,213 in early 2025 and reached 1,940 by the first quarter of this year, according to Executive Director Clarice James, who said the increase reflects both a growing local population in need and shifting federal immigration policy that has upended the legal status of entire communities with little warning.
James, who has led the Allentown-based organization for about seven years, said the nonprofit grew out of her background in social work, case management and ESL instruction, along with her family’s history as first-generation Colombian Americans.
“It’s the obligation of every person born in a safer room to open the door when someone in danger knocks,” James said, citing the line as central to the organization’s mission statement.
M.I.R.A., an acronym meant to reflect the range of legal statuses the group serves, from undocumented migrants to documented refugees, operates as a registered 501(c)(3) with what James described as a “no-fund model.” The organization accepts no federal or state grants and charges nothing for its services, relying instead on individual donations and small community fundraisers to cover what James said amounts to roughly $200 a month in operating costs.
Every core staff member, including James, is a volunteer. The organization’s roster includes two general case managers, two employment case managers, a data specialist, one intern James considers part of the core team, and 13 instructors who run six ongoing ESL courses each week, some in person and some virtual. A separate pool of community volunteers helps with seasonal efforts such as holiday food and toy deliveries.
Because the group doesn’t receive federal grants, James said, it does not verify immigration status before providing services and collects only a name, contact information, and basic information about what help a client needs.
“We don’t need your Social Security number to refer you to a food bank,” James said.
M.I.R.A. does not employ attorneys directly. Instead, James said, the organization has arranged partnerships with immigration lawyers and a general attorney who handles wills and powers of attorney, allowing some fees to be waived or handled pro bono. Legal services and ESL instruction are currently the two most requested services, James said, in part because both are free of registration barriers and, in the case of legal aid, driven by rising anxiety among clients about detention and removal.
James said the biggest constraints on the organization’s ability to help more unauthorized noncitizens and documented immigrants are legal costs it cannot absorb, such as full citizenship applications or cases involving detained family members, and the difficulty of finding steady employment for clients, most of whom are undocumented. She said M.I.R.A. has built relationships with employers in landscaping, restaurants, hotels and gas stations willing to hire clients, but described the available jobs as far short of demand.
The countries and regions represented among M.I.R.A.’s clients have shifted over the years, James said, from earlier waves of families from Sudan, Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Iran and Ukraine to a client base over roughly the past two years dominated by Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Peru.
More recently, James said, the organization saw an influx of Haitian families after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for Haitian nationals, a decision James said stripped legal status from people who had done nothing to lose it.
“It was really just kind of, again, going from having a legal status one night to all of a sudden not having it the next day,” James said.
Increased federal immigration enforcement this year has left clients afraid to go to work, attend religious services or send children to school, including families with green cards and other secured legal status, James argued. She pointed to a local high school where, she said, about 80% of one class did not show up the day after President Trump took office, out of fear that students or their family members could be detained.
The organization has also changed how it operates internally, tightening data security protocols and asking new clients to explain how they were referred to M.I.R.A. to verify that intake requests are legitimate. She said the group sees surges in new clients after publicized ICE raids or enforcement actions in the region.
According to James, the pace of immigration court proceedings has sped up and slowed down depending on the stage of a case. Clients who are detained now move through the system in as little as a week, she said, compared to six months to a year in years past, leaving less time for attorneys to prepare a defense before a client is transferred to a detention facility and, often, removed. At the same time, routine cases that once moved predictably through the courts are now being handled inconsistently.
James firmly pushed back on the political talking point that undocumented immigrants receive public benefits, noting that undocumented clients cannot obtain a Social Security number and therefore cannot access food stamps, cash assistance, subsidized insurance, or tax refunds even though many pay into the tax system through employment visas, sales tax, and other methods of taxation. She also disputed any link between undocumented status and criminality, saying the vast majority of unauthorized noncitizens have no criminal history.
This disputation appears to reflect national studies and ongoing research. According to a study that a Stanford-educated economist and his co-authors largely analyzed, immigrants have not been more likely to be imprisoned than natural-born American citizens for at least 140 years.
James attributed the persistence of those misconceptions to political and media rhetoric rather than grassroots belief. When asked whether her organization has received public support from elected officials, she said that Lehigh County Controller Mark Pinsley and former U.S. Rep. Susan Wild have publicly supported the organization’s work.
M.I.R.A. will hold a free community event, promoted as an “ice resistance” art exhibition, from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Sept. 12 at Soft Machine Gallery in Allentown, featuring submitted poetry, paintings, and other published work alongside live music. James said the organization is currently hiring for ESL instructor and case manager positions, and directed residents to the group’s website, Instagram, and Facebook page for more information.