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Healthcare and Justice for Immigrant Children and Families
Our Mission
Terra Firma National (TFN) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to ensure that unaccompanied migrant children and migrant families seeking humanitarian protection in the United States have access to quality healthcare and legal services so they can achieve stability, build resilience, and reach their full potential.
Our Vision
Our vision is that newly-arrived immigrant children and families have access to quality healthcare and legal representation, regardless of immigration status.
What We Do
Terra Firma National (TFN) is the first and only organization in the U.S. dedicated to launching and supporting a national network of programs that integrate medical, legal, and mental health services for unaccompanied immigrant children and migrant families to improve health and legal outcomes.
The Terra Firma Flagship program is the first medical-legal partnership in the United States specifically designed to serve unaccompanied immigrant children in the community.
The Terra Firma Model
Developed in the South Bronx in 2013, the Terra Firma Model achieved national recognition for its pioneering approach to integrating immigration legal services for unaccompanied children into a community health center and, responding to a growing need, subsequently expanded to include migrant families. Now, Terra Firma National is building a national network of Terra Firma programs.
The Terra Firma Model is based on the following principles:
Medical Home: An optimal setting to provide healthcare for children and families who have not had access to comprehensive care in their countries of origin.
Healthcare-Legal Partnership: multi-sector professionals working side by side to increase access to services and improve health outcomes and immigration legal decisions.
The Terra Firma Model connects patients to legal services, which drastically increases the odds of winning their case in immigration court.
Asylum Medicine: Healthcare providers conduct evaluations that document torture and persecution. Testimony by healthcare providers serve as critical evidence in immigration cases.
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