Deputy Project Director for Immigration Detention

ABOUT THE JOB

The ACLU seeks a full-time position of Deputy Project Director for Immigration Detention in the National Prison Project (NPP) of the ACLU’s National office in Washington, D.C.

The National Prison Project works to ensure that conditions in prisons, jails, juvenile detention centers, and immigration detention facilities comply with the Constitution, domestic law, and international human rights principles. NPP has successfully litigated on behalf of incarcerated and detained people in more than 25 states, and is the only organization litigating conditions of confinement cases nationwide. Our priorities include reducing overcrowding, improving health care, eliminating violence and maltreatment, and increasing oversight and accountability in prisons, jails, and other places of detention. We also work to reverse the policies that have given the United States the highest incarceration rate in the world and led to extreme over-representation of people of color in our country’s prisons, jails, and immigration detention facilities.

WHAT YOU'LL DO 

Reporting to the NPP Project Director, the Deputy Project Director for Immigration Detention will assist the Project Director in all aspects of management of the Project, including strategic planning, fundraising, and supervision of Project staff. This position will have a particular emphasis on challenging immigration detention conditions and the use and abuse of immigration detention in the federal government’s mass deportation system, and will coordinate closely with counterparts in the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. The Deputy Project Director will lead complex civil rights litigation in state and federal court, and develop and lead integrated advocacy campaigns.

YOUR DAY TO DAY

Staffing and Supervision

• Directly supervise specified staff attorneys, legal fellows, and/or administrative staff, including regular check-ins, approval of expense reports, and time off requests.
• Assist Project Director, Co-Deputy Project Director, and management team in making staffing decisions
• Ensure balance of work across Project staff, including opportunities for writing, arguments, discovery, witness examinations, case development, and other professional growth
• Ensure that Project staff maintain and foster relationships with media, coalition partners, and other targets and allies
• With an eye on developing and maintaining an excellent and diverse staff, collaborate with other members of management team to:
• Improve process for hiring, onboarding, and managing new staff, fellows, and interns, which includes recruiting excellent candidates and furthering our board-mandated goal to increase the percentage of staff with disabilities and significant disabilities and to work in furtherance of our other announced diversity hiring initiatives
• Oversee sustained efforts to create and nurture pools of diverse candidates from which to recruit

Administration

• Align with management, including collaborating with and sharing ownership of decisions made by the NPP Project Director, Trone Center for Justice Director, and Senior Staff
• Assume responsibility for specified administrative functions such gathering particular data for legal or development departments; and ensuring accuracy of case database, among other work, as directed
• Assist the NPP Project Director and Deputy Project Director with expense tracking and budgeting, as directed

Legal & Advocacy 

• Engage in litigation in federal and state court, including drafting pleadings, briefs, and affidavits
• Serve as lead counsel or co-lead counsel on a substantial caseload of major class actions in federal court, working closely with other staff attorneys, local counsel, immigrant rights organizations, and clients
• Conduct discovery and motion practice, handle hearings and trials, argue appeals in both federal and state courts
• Manage case development and conduct client and witness interviews
• Conduct legal research and write legal memoranda
• Provide technical assistance and expert legal advice to local ACLU affiliates, cooperating attorneys and others who seek assistance from the Project
• Lead and manage advocacy campaigns including developing and executing strategic goals and managing campaign advocacy, research, and public education efforts
• Conduct policy advocacy on prisoners’ and detainees’ rights, criminal justice, and immigration detention issues
• Develop new cases and non-litigation advocacy projects
• Travel as required for litigation, conferences, and case and strategy development

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