JUSTICE WITHOUT BORDERS
The MAS Immigrant Justice Center (MASIJC) is a community-centered, grassroots initiative dedicated to defending the civil rights, liberties, and dignity of immigrants in the United States. Rooted in principles of justice, compassion, and accountability, MASIJC works to ensure that immigrants—particularly those from vulnerable and marginalized communities—receive fair treatment within the legal system and in the broader fabric of American society.
Our work is guided by a commitment to strengthening the rule of law while advocating for meaningful reforms that uphold both national security and fundamental constitutional protections. Through legal advocacy, community education, and policy engagement, MASIJC strives to ensure that courts and public institutions remain places where justice is accessible to all.
A central component of our work is the MASIJC Immigrant Defense Fund, which supports legal representation and advocacy for individuals facing complex immigration proceedings, detention, or civil rights violations. Access to legal counsel can mean the difference between safety and deportation, family unity and separation, justice and silence.
In addition to immigration defense, MASIJC collaborates with legal advocacy initiatives that seek to protect civil liberties and defend individuals who may otherwise lack meaningful representation. These efforts address civil liberties concerns that disproportionately affect Muslim and immigrant communities, including:
In addition to immigration defense, MASIJC collaborates with initiatives such as the legal fund of assist the defenseless to address civil liberties concerns affecting immigrant communities. These efforts focus on confronting and challenging unwarranted actions that disproportionately impact immigrants, including:
discriminatory travel restrictions and immigration denials
unfair prosecutions, excessive sentencing, and inhumane prison conditions
unjust bank account closures and financial discrimination
the targeting of vulnerable youth through informant operations
heightened scrutiny of nonprofit and humanitarian work
intimidation or coercion aimed at forcing Immigrants to compromise their beliefs
denial of religiouaccommodations for Immigrants prisoners
These challenges threaten not only immigrant communities but also the broader constitutional principles of religious freedom, due process, and equal protection under the law.
MASIJC believes that safeguarding these principles is essential to the health of a just and democratic society. By providing legal advocacy, defending civil liberties, and supporting those most vulnerable to injustice, we work to ensure that the promise of justice remains meaningful for all.
Through partnerships with attorneys, advocates, community leaders, and supporters across the country, MASIJC continues to stand at the forefront of efforts to protect immigrant rights and defend civil liberties.
Justice, dignity, and fairness are not privileges reserved for a few—they are rights that belong to everyone.
Our Services
YOUNG VOICES FOR
CHANGE
Youth Matters
History has shown that young people have always been a force for good. Our schools, neighborhoods, cities, states, and countries would be much better places for everyone if youth participation in policymaking was the norm, not the exception. Through their actions, the world has changed. Because young people often have the desire, energy, and idealism to do something about the injustice they see in the world, they are powerful agents for change.
Most of us were once strangers in this land. This is why MASIJC fights tirelessly for those making their own flight from war and oppression. Historically we have called for just and humanitarian immigration policies. Join us. Be a part of the struggle for freedom.
Sean Penn may be widely known as an actor, but he’s also the founder of the nonprofit organization CORE — Community Organized Relief Effort. The organization has provided services following major disasters in Haiti and New Orleans and is now working to increase testing for the coronavirus in Los Angeles. To date, CORE has tested more than 20,000 Angelenos at six different sites in L.A. and Malibu.
Penn said that the lessons he and his team members have learned over the past decade allowed them to act fast when COVID-19 hit. “Because I had this organization with skill sets, with a lot of talented, very bright people, and very experienced, when this outbreak happened with this pandemic, I was able to quickly mobilize our people to respond,” said Penn.
Crediting, again, the people with whom he works, Penn said that his organization’s efforts
Before he leaves the sites, Penn puts a second mask over his regular one to cover a greater surface area and used disinfectant wipes all over his truck's dashboard.
The actor and activist has been helping his foundation run the Malibu testing site, which offers free tests to first responders and essential workers, as well as all local Malibu residents.
The drive-through offers two different coronavirus tests: a nasal swab that's pushed all the way back to the throat, as well as an antibody test that requires a small finger prick and can determine if someone is infected with the coronavirus or was previously infected.
The nasal swab takes two to three days to get results back, while the antibody test can take five to seven days. Penn and CORE have also been helping to run drive-through testing locations throughout the city of Los Angeles.
With an eye toward expanding his test sites outside of L.A., Penn added that he hopes the pandemic will ultimately push Americans towards fact-based decision-making.
“It's my hope that this will be an experience that turns the light on and says, we've got to pay attention to science,” he said. “We have to have public policy that pays attention to science, supports science… I am an optimist almost enough to believe that this can really unify and move us forward.”
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Dear Reader,
If you learn anything from our work, I first and foremost hope you will see that it is not just about policy concerns, although that is part of it; it is about people. People matter. Their struggle to live as human beings matter. I sincerely hope that some of what we do in the name of justice and civil rights will challenge and inspire you. Throughout our work we have tried to emphasize our responsibility as human beings to ourselves and to each other.
The world is not what it once was, and we are not who we were, but we can take power over becoming the good people we seek to become — if we are willing to spend a few hours and find reasons to ponder what it means to be kinder and more compassionate; people who are willing to contribute to one’s community, to one's society and this country because life, liberty, and justice demand that we do so. vibrant human future: We are all foot soldiers in the struggle to unify the human spirit despite all the disruptions of conflict, war and natural calamities.
Faith is not a call to escape responsibility but to embrace it.
Creation is not an complex testing ground with nothing but moral obstacles to overcome but instead, a summons to come an join in the work of helping others; a voice urging to be involved in actively working to improve the world we were born to by our individual and collective efforts making it a kinder, and safer place.
Sincerely,
Khalilah Sabra, Executive Director
Attorney of Law