The immigration system is designed to keep unaccompanied immigrant kids out of the country, denying their legal and human rights. Without guaranteed representation, they are forced to defend their case to stay in the U.S. all alone – no matter how young they are.
It will be a long road to fix the courts. In the meantime, Acacia Center for Justice is working with HelpGood to recruit and train lawyers to bridge this inhumane gap in justice.
Our objectives were to reach two key target audiences to encourage them to visit our site and join our email list to explore a career in immigration law:
With active recruitment to paid positions at 100+ partner organizations in Acacia’s Unaccompanied Children Program and the Immigrant Justice Corps’ paid two-year student Justice Fellowship, we aimed to recruit passionate individuals to paid opportunities at all experience levels.
Young kids defending themselves in immigration court made headlines during the Trump administration in 2016. Since then, the news cycle has moved on, along with our attention. However, the issue persists and in some ways has gotten worse. Our biggest challenge during this recruitment campaign is gaining traction in such a busy news cycle with so many urgent issues needing action. Working with influencers was a way for us to reach our audiences with voices they trust.
We hand-picked two influencers who represented our target audiences to a tee for long-term partnerships: Reb Masel and Jordan McMeans.
To ensure their content was true to their voice, we gave each of them a one-page brief about the issue but left the creativity up to them. Their authenticity is what their audiences respond best to, so we trusted them completely with the format and style of the video content.
To kick off the campaign, we worked with Reb and Jordan to bring awareness to Acacia’s work and Fellowship opportunities. Their frustrated outrage at the failing of the justice system resonated with hundreds of thousands of lawyers and law students eager to make a change.
A few months later, off the heels of a devastating asylum decision by the Biden administration that would impact the decisions families would have to make at the border, we worked fast to partner with Reb again to share how this decision would impact families immigrating to the U.S. By tapping into an urgent moment, we were able to raise awareness of the injustice unaccompanied children face when navigating immigration proceedings alone, and inspire lawyers to explore a career change to fight back.
The videos reached a combined 1.4 million views on TikTok – and led to over 800 new followers to Acacia’s new TikTok account. The videos also include a verbal call to action to visit the campaign landing page, which saw a roughly 300% increase in direct traffic in the days after the release.
We consider these videos a success not just because they were effective in ticking up impressions, followers, and site visits, but because they sparked conversations in the comment section among lawyers about how important this work is. The videos earned over 1,700 comments, the majority of which were overwhelmingly positive, an almost unheard of phenomenon on the internet.
