The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights is a national non-profit organization committed to advancing the rights and best interests of immigrant children according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and state and federal law. We do so through three different programs:
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• Child Advocate Program: Pursuant to federal law, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services appoints Child Advocates to unaccompanied and separated immigrant children in federal juvenile immigration detention centers in Chicago and across the country. The role of the Child Advocate is to identify and advocate for the best interests of individual children and ensure that all decisions about them—including custody, placement, reunification with family, permanency, and repatriation—take into consideration their best interests.
• Technical Assistance Program: This program offers trauma-informed and culturally sensitive case consultations, mentorship, resources, and trainings to attorneys and service providers working with immigrant children involved in state child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Our goal is to increase the capacity of advocates and service providers working directly with immigrant children to identify challenges they face and to know how to address them or who to ask for help in addressing them. In doing so, we strive to amplify the voices of immigrant children and youth, to support their placement in community-based settings outside of government custody, to preserve their familial bonds and cultural ties, and to advocate for their long-term safety and well-being.
• Policy Program: Our Policy Program works to incorporate the best interests of the child standard into practice, policy, and immigration law. Federal law does not explicitly require immigration officials to consider the best interests mandate of immigrant children, which leads to family separation, detention, unfair court hearings, and the repatriation of children to danger—even when there is evidence the child will be harmed upon return. We advocate directly with federal agencies, work with Congressional offices, participate in litigation, author reports, and implement communications strategies with the goal of completely reimagining the system for unaccompanied children.

The Wage and Hour Division mission is to promote and achieve compliance with labor standards to protect and enhance the welfare of the nation's workforce.

Laws Administered and Enforced
The Wage and Hour Division (WHD) enforces federal minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and child labor requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. WHD also enforces the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, the Employee Polygraph Protection Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, wage garnishment provisions of the Consumer Credit Protection Act, and a number of employment standards and worker protections as provided in several immigration related statutes. Additionally, WHD administers and enforces the prevailing wage requirements of the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts and the Service Contract Act and other statutes applicable to federal contracts for construction and for the provision of goods and services.

Heartland Alliance's National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) is dedicated to ensuring human rights protections and access to justice for all immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. NIJC provides direct legal services to and advocates for these populations through policy reform, impact litigation, and public education. Since its founding three decades ago, NIJC has been unique in blending individual client advocacy with broad-based systemic change. NIJC provide immigration legal services to survivors of labor and sex trafficking through its Counter-Trafficking Project and other projects.

For more information, please visit our website at https://immigrantjustice.org/. 

The Salvation Army STOP-IT Program provides comprehensive case management services to all victims of human trafficking and is co-leader of the Cook County Human Trafficking Task Force. STOP-IT works directly with suspected trafficked persons no matter their age, race, gender, immigration status or sexual orientation. STOP-IT works with adults and minors, sex and labor trafficking survivors, domestic (US citizens and lawful permanent residents) and foreign national (documented and undocumented). STOP-IT also operates a drop-in center, contact the hotline to learn more.

Freedom from Trafficking (FFT) is a community-based program of Heartland Human Care Services that envisions a world free of human trafficking and full of opportunity. Freedom from Trafficking offers intensive case management services, emergency and transitional housing, and mental health support to survivors of human trafficking in the Chicagoland area.

The Human Trafficking Initiative, a project of Metropolitan Family Services’ Legal Aid Society, has been at the forefront of the fight against human trafficking in the Chicago area since 2012. The project provides free, holistic legal representation to survivors of human trafficking on legal issues related to their exploitation. A federal grant has enabled the Human Trafficking Initiative to provide anti-trafficking training and technical assistance to professionals to help identify and refer trafficking survivors.

Illinois Department of Children and Family Services

Founded in 1964, DCFS has the primary responsibility of protecting children and strengthening families through the investigation and intervention of suspected child abuse or neglect by parents and other caregivers. Over the last four years, DCFS received more than one million calls to our Child Abuse Hotline, offering and coordinating services wherever needed to help children remain in their homes safely. In instances where children must be removed from the home for their safety and well-being, DCFS makes every effort to return them safely to their homes as quickly as possible. When that simply is not possible, DCFS is equally committed to pursuing adoption by loving families to provide children with the permanent, safe, and nurturing homes they need and deserve to reach their fullest potential. As part of its duties, DCFS licenses and monitors all Illinois child welfare agencies and more than 14,000 day care centers, homes, group homes and day care agencies in the state. 

Please contact the DCFS Human Trafficking Coordinator, Stacy Sloan, at 217-785-1898 or stacy.sloan@illinois.gov for more information.

Each year, the FBI investigates thousands of crimes involving hundreds of thousands of victims. As a vital partner in the FBI's response to crime, Victim Specialists work directly with FBI Special Agents to ensure that victims of crimes investigated by the FBI are provided their legal rights and are connected to critical support, services and resources.