Our Mission
Sur Legal Collaborative seeks to empower workers and organizers by putting legal tools and knowledge in their hands to disrupt the labor abuse to deportation pipeline and expose abusive employers, industries, and systems of oppression.
Working at the intersection of labor rights, immigrant rights, and mass decarceration.
Immigrants are among the most vulnerable workers in the country, often working in hazardous industries and being frequent targets of immoral employers. Though imperfect, labor laws provide recourse and can empower immigrant and low-income workers. Immigrants are further oppressed by an immigration system that creates a culture of fear and violence through ICE enforcement, detention, and deportation.
Sur’s team of attorneys and organizers are experts in immigration and labor rights. Sharing their knowledge and putting legal tools in the hands of the people is at the core of everything we do. The ultimate goal of our work is systemic change led by the communities we serve.
Our History
Sur Legal Collaborative was founded in October 2020 by attorneys, Shelly Anand and Lynn Damiano Pearson, to address the need for community-based legal advocacy at the intersection of immigrant and worker rights in Georgia and the Deep South.
Our founding coincided with two catastrophic events that disproportionately impacted Black and brown immigrant women in Georgia: a deadly nitrogen leak at poultry processing facility, Foundation Food Group (FFG), that killed six workers and a nurse whistleblower sounding the alarm against a doctor performing non-consensual gynecological procedures against detained immigrant women at Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC), an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.
In the days and months that followed, Lynn and Shelly collaborated with partners to lead a rapid response and ongoing legal advocacy for those impacted, including assisting with the release of the last three women detained at ICDC, which led to the contract with ICE ending and no longer being used as an immigration detention facility, and helping FFG survivors secure immigration status and participate in ongoing investigations against their employers. Since then, Sur Legal has played a major role in democratizing legal knowledge and putting legal tools in the hands of workers to hold abusive employers accountable for labor violations. From helping poultry processing workers who survived multiple chemical leaks at their workplace file successful Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) complaints against their negligent employers to being the first organization in the country to secure protection from deportation for workers involved in a federal labor investigation, Sur Legal has become a nationally recognized leader for organizing at the intersection of labor and immigrant rights.
Through our programming, we fight against the labor-abuse-to-deportation pipeline, a system that pulls immigrants to this country to take on dangerous work at low wages and disposes of them through the racialized detention and deportation machine – particularly if they illuminate hazardous or abusive employment practices.
By collaborating with grassroots organizations and those directly impacted we crafted our programming around 3 areas:
From great tragedy, courageous survivors spoke truth to power.
Labor Rights
Sur further seeks to empower immigrant workers by identifying other labor abuses such as wage theft and labor trafficking, while also advocating for systemic change to end exploitation of all immigrant and low-wage workers.
Mass Decarceration
Immigrant Rights
Sur Legal works alongside community groups and directly impacted individuals to advance the movement towards a more humane immigration system and an end to mass incarceration. Sur Legal further provides support to the movement by leveraging federal policies that promote informed citizenry and government transparency, such as the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Open Records Requests (ORA), through fact investigation.
The U.S. immigration system is complex by design, with numerous policies and regulations, various levels of involvement of federal agencies, and a plethora of visa categories and pathways to residency. Further, this system has historically exercised harsh enforcement that infringes on the rights of all persons within our nation. Sur Legal seeks to demystify this system and empower those entangled in it, while simultaneously exposing the injustices it inflicts.
Values that guide our work.
We believe that no human being is illegal and we believe in labor solidarity and interconnectedness, regardless of race and status.
Our value as human beings is not tied to our labor output. We recognize the humanity and agency of the populations we work alongside.
Above all else, our work is informed and directed by our clients and their lived experience.
We are committed to disrupting power imbalances and entrenched systems of oppression including white supremacy, capitalism, imperialism, and the carceral state.
We strive to avoid responding from a position of urgency and crisis, taking a long view of the needs and goals of the communities we serve.