The San Diego Rapid Response Network (SDRRN) is a coalition of human rights and service organizations, attorneys, and community leaders dedicated to aiding immigrants and their families in the San Diego border region.

San Diego is the largest land border crossing in the world and has been a highly active location for deportations, rights violations, and abuse by Customs Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The SDRRN was activated to respond to increased immigration enforcement activities within San Diego County and humanitarian issues arising at the border, including widespread family separation and unjust deportation of asylum seekers presenting at the Port-of-Entry.

The increasingly complex legal and social challenges faced by immigrants in the 1970s created a growing need for expert assistance and training in immigration law and policy. Bill Ong Hing, a well-known immigrant rights attorney, recognized this need and founded the Golden Gate Immigration Clinic in 1979, which later became the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC). The ILRC seeks to improve immigration law and policy, expand the capacity of legal service providers, and advance immigrant rights.

The ILRC trains attorneys, paralegals, and community-based advocates who work with immigrants around the country. We inform the media, elected officials, and public to shape effective and just immigration policy and law. Our staff works with grassroots immigrant organizations to promote civic engagement and social change.

For more than nine decades, the ACLU has led the fight for equal protection under the law for all people.  The San Diego ACLU has been the region’s civil rights advocate since 1933.

We are a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that reaches out to and represents anyone whose fundamental freedoms have been violated. We are the largest organization defending civil rights and civil liberties in the world.

The ACLU protects American values and preserves American freedoms. Our job is to conserve America’s civic values – as expressed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights – and defend these rights even when its unpopular to do so.

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