Yael Ben Tov

The Project

Yael’s project protected the rights of refugees to be safely reunited with their families through lawsuits seeking prompt adjudication of delayed Follow-to Join (FTJ) applications, community outreach, and systemic advocacy.

During the difficult, sometimes chaotic flight to safety, refugee families are often separated and unable to travel together. Acknowledging this reality, the FTJ process was created as an immigration pathway specifically for refugee and asylum family reunification. Processing standstills kept thousands of refugee families separated for years, often living in precarious conditions as they waited to reunify. The COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated these delays. As the backlog grows, follow-to-join refugees need systemic advocacy efforts to enforce their right to be reunited with their families in the United States.

Yael’s family history drives her desire to build a career assisting immigrants and refugees as they face an increasingly complex and hostile immigration system.

Fellowship Highlights

During the two-year Fellowship, Yael:

• Litigated in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland on behalf of two Sudanese refugees, now resettled in the Baltimore area, who waited years to be reunified with their families
• Investigated processing delays through the Freedom of Information Act and other litigation
• Contributed to a public report and published a summary describing the causes of follow-to-join delay and making recommendations for addressing those delays
• Developed further litigation strategies to reunify refugees who were separated from their families
• Expanded advocacy and litigation to address security vetting inefficiencies that contributed to delays
• Coordinated with pro bono and organizational partners to support litigation addressing delayed FTJ petitions and reunify refugees with their families

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