For Immediate Release: May 28, 2019
CONTACT: Attorney Kristen Noelle Hatcher
Email: khatcher@connlegalservices.org
Phone: 860-225-8678

As the extreme weather season begins, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, and other natural disasters threaten to bring myriad civil legal problems for Connecticut residents, from accessing critical disaster assistance to securing temporary housing to handling insurance claims. Connecticut Legal Services will be there to provide advice and assistance but residents should act now to ensure that they have accessible documents and pictures of them and everything in their home before a natural disaster arrives. A few simple actions can help to avoid legal problems later.

First, residents should take photographs of everything, including their home, belongings, pets, and important documents. This will help with insurance and FEMA claims. Then, residents should upload the photographs to a secure location and email them to themselves and put the camera in a watertight container.

Preparation for disasters is key.

Residents should review the title to their property to make sure that ownership is clear and unencumbered before disasters happen, and to try to remedy any title issues that might exist before they become a stumbling block to recovery in the aftermath.

Residents should place their and their family members’ most important records and documents in a safe place. Keep them in a large sealable plastic bag or other watertight container and keep them nearby – possibly in their vehicle, along with a to-go bag with essentials that they would need if they had to quickly evacuate. Residents should be sure to make copies of these documents and store them in a safe secondary location, such as a safe deposit box. What documents should be gathered? Items include:

• Account numbers for credit card, checking, and savings accounts
• Adoption papers
• Bank and utility records
• Bills that will be needed to pay, like credit cards or utility bills
• Birth certificates
• Computer passwords
• Deeds and rental agreements
• Divorce and custody decrees
• Driver’s license
• Immunization records
• Insurance, proof of (e.g. homeowners, renters, flood, earthquake, auto, life, health, disability, long-term care; have at least the policy number and insurance company contact information for each type of coverage)
• Marriage license
• Medical directives
• Medical records, including copies or photographs of medical prescriptions
• Military discharge records
• Military ID
• Passports, immigration paperwork such as green cards, work authorization, or naturalization papers
• Pet records (medical and vaccination records for pets along with current photos and ID chip numbers in case of separation)
• Powers of attorney including medical powers of attorney
• School records
• Social Security card
• Tax returns (First two pages of previous year’s federal and state tax returns)
• Vehicle title and registration and proof of insurance
• Wills and estate planning documents

Residents should start with the most important and most difficult items and property to replace and visit http://bit.ly/HelpfulDisasterResources or contact Attorney Kristen Noelle Hatcher at khatcher@connlegalservices.org or (860) 225-8678 for more information.

Attorney Nilda Rodriguez Havrilla has been selected as CLS’ new Litigation and Advocacy Director. Nilda, a graduate of Trinity College and Northeastern University School of Law, brings extensive experience to her new role. Nilda served as Managing Attorney of the CLS Housing Unit from 2011-2019 and as a CLS staff attorney from 2004-2011. Nilda is a James W. Cooper Fellow of the Connecticut Bar Foundation, has served on the board of the Friendship Service Center in New Britain, and currently serves on the board of the Connecticut Fair Housing Center.

CLS Managing Attorney, Joanne Lewis, was named as the recipient of the New Britain Bar Association’s 2019 Law Day Award for Public Service.

We are pleased to announce that Attorney Anne Louise Blanchard has been selected as CLS’ new Deputy Director. Anne Louise brings extensive leadership experience to her new role, including more than a decade as CLS’ Litigation and Advocacy Director.

On August 16, leaders of the Connecticut bar launched an urgent new campaign to raise funds to provide expanded legal help for low-income immigrant children and families. CLS helped to design the Connecticut Lawyers for Immigration Justice campaign, and the proceeds will support our immigration advocacy and that of our partner organizations.

The campaign was announced by retired Chief Justice Chase Rogers and retired Superior Court Judge Robert Holzberg, a member of CLS’ board of directors, in an article in the Hartford Courant that also featured CLS Executive Director Deborah Witkin.

Connecticut Lawyers for Immigration Justice was inspired by CLS’ successful advocacy on behalf of two immigrant children who were detained and forcibly separated from their parents after they came to the United States seeking asylum. The children were detained in Connecticut, and CLS joined with Yale Law School’s Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic to win their release and reunification.

Click here to learn more about the suit and read the pleadings.

But tragically, the kind of representation that CLS and Yale Law School provided in those two cases is just not available to every immigrant family in Connecticut right now.

Statewide, all three of Connecticut’s full-service legal aid organizations – CLS, New Haven Legal Assistance Association (NHLAA) and Greater Hartford Legal Aid (GHLA) – have seen a significant increase in demand for immigration legal services. The fundraising campaign will send 100% of every dollar raised to CLS, NHLAA, and GHLA, to be dedicated to immigration legal services.

On Monday, July 16, CLS and the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic at Yale Law School successfully won release and reunification for two immigrant families who were detained and forcibly separated after they came to the United States seeking asylum.

CLS and the clinic filed emergency federal lawsuits on July 2 on behalf of 9-year-old JSR and 14-year-old VFB, who were detained in Connecticut by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. The children escaped persecution and violence in their home countries of Honduras and El Salvador only to be taken from their parents as part of the Trump Administration’s illegal “zero tolerance policy.”

Click here to learn more about the suit and read the pleadings.

The lawsuits, filed in the District Court of Connecticut, cited constitutional and statutory grounds, including the constitutional right to family integrity, in challenging the government practices that resulted in the harrowing dismantling of thousands of asylum-seeking families.

Click here to read a powerful editorial in the Hartford Courant applauding CLS’ work.

On July 13, 2018, U.S. District Court Judge Victor Bolden responded to the lawsuits by holding that the government’s conduct inflicted deep trauma and violated the children’s due process rights. The judge ordered the government to act immediately to remedy the trauma it caused the children. Three days later, the government transferred the parents from Texas to Connecticut, granted them parole, and reunited them with their children.

These are the first cases in the country brought by children, rather than parents, to challenge the Trump Administration’s forcible family separation policy. They are also the first cases in which a federal court held that the government’s systematic dissolution of immigrant families violates the children’s constitutional rights.

At CLS, the children were represented by a team that included Managing Attorney Joanne Lewis and staff attorneys Massiel Zucco-Himmelstein and Kelly Bonafe. “This is a victory for two families and for an entire community in Connecticut that united behind these children and in support of our state’s basic values of freedom, fairness, and family,” said attorney Zucco-Himmelstein. “We look forward to a time when every immigrant child has the kind of support and advocacy that won freedom for JSR and VFB.”

CLS began representing JSR and VFB as part of its ongoing advocacy on behalf of children who are detained at a federally-contracted shelter in eastern Connecticut. For more than a year, CLS has been visiting the shelter several times a month to meet with, and advocate for, the children who are detained there. Until May of this year, those children were all unaccompanied minors — children who came to the U.S. border without any parents or guardians. To date, JSR and VFB are the only children to arrive in Connecticut who were forcibly separated from their parents after crossing the border.

Click here to learn more about our work for unaccompanied immigrant children.