RAICES 2025 Year in Review: Defending Dignity + Engineering Resilience
To Our RAICES Community,
We are living through unprecedented times—a defining moment in the history of our country. The national political climate surrounding immigration has grown increasingly hostile, characterized by punitive policy shifts and the distressing resurgence of family detention.
At RAICES, we refuse to let these policies silence the people and families fighting for freedom and dignity. Throughout 2025, our team served as a crucial frontline witness and a moral counterweight to systemic cruelty. We operate with a clear mandate: to secure safety, stability, and just pathways for families navigating the U.S. immigration system.
Faced with massive administrative policy shifts, federal contract terminations, and stop-work orders, RAICES did not just weather the storm—we reengineered our strategy. Backed by a healthy $40M+ "Fortress" Reserve and an energized donor base, we have shifted from a reactive defense model to an intentional posture of Financial Sovereignty and Operational Endurance.
No matter how political winds shift, RAICES is building a permanent, self-sustaining institution that cannot be dismantled. Thank you for standing in the fight with us.
Anna L. Flores and Faisal Al-Juburi
Co-CEOs, RAICES
Mission and Vision
At RAICES, we envision a country where all people, regardless of where they were born, have the opportunity to pursue safety, stability, and the American dream with dignity and respect.
To move closer to that vision, RAICES ensures that the families we work with who are navigating the U.S. immigration system are heard and given just pathways to call this country home. Through a holistic approach that combines legal and social services, we support individuals and families who want to put down roots in the U.S. while cultivating welcoming communities that uphold our shared values and freedoms.
Mission Impact + Program Highlights
In 2025, RAICES provided holistic legal, advocacy, and social services to 7,970 individual service recipients.
1. Direct Immigration Legal Aid
Our legal teams managed an average of 2,500 active immigration cases each month, securing more than 700 positive outcomes. Attorneys and accredited representatives maintained strict caseloads of approximately 80 cases each to ensure quality, compassionate representation.
Family Detention Response: When the administration restarted family detention at the Karnes County and Dilley facilities, RAICES mobilized instantly. We provided legal representation and critical advocacy to 300 families in federal custody—65% of whom were held beyond the lawful 20-day child detention limit.
Lifelines of Resistance: Through these rapid-response efforts, we successfully secured the release of over 100 people and families back into their community support networks.
2. Refugee Services
Since 2017, RAICES has proudly resettled more than 2,400 individuals from over two dozen countries. In 2025, we navigated an unprecedented federal "Stop-Work" order that suspended funding mid-year for several months and left U.S. refugee aid forever changed.
The Client-First Protocol: We acted instantly to disburse remaining direct assistance funds to ensure our clients' immediate safety before the funding freeze took effect.
Sustaining Care: Despite the eventual termination of the traditional federal Reception & Placement (R&P) grant, we successfully stabilized our internal operations to serve 1,487 refugee clients in San Antonio.
3. Rights Advocacy
Our Asylum Access and Strategic Litigation units functioned as the organization’s high-velocity "Intelligence Engine." By collecting real-time operational data from the frontlines of detention, we shaped national public awareness and launched key constitutional lawsuits.
Blocking the Border Asylum Ban (RAICES v. Noem, July 2025): RAICES served as a lead plaintiff alongside the ACLU to successfully strike down a sweeping executive proclamation attempting to shut down border asylum via an unconstitutional "invasion" declaration.
Challenging Courthouse Arrests (Immigrant ARC v. DOJ, July 2025): We filed a federal class-action lawsuit challenging the administration’s egregious practice of allowing DHS agents to ambush and arrest people at their scheduled court hearings, eviscerating Fifth Amendment due process rights.
Press Highlights: Bearing Witness in the News
Recognizing that law is downstream from culture, RAICES actively elevates the lived experiences of immigrant families to shift public narrative and confront systemic abuses. Select national media features from 2025 include:
The New York Times (March 2025) – "Trump Administration Revives Detention of Immigrant Families" An in-depth exposé on the return of family detention at Karnes and Dilley, spotlighting RAICES' front-line efforts where we secured the release of over half the families we represented.
Associated Press (June 2025) – "New insight into Texas family detention reveals adults fighting kids for clean water" A harrowing look inside Texas family detention centers detailing appalling conditions, highlighting infants losing weight, children denied medical care, and the urgent necessity of defending the Flores Settlement Agreement.
The Guardian (September 2025) – "Plane to purgatory: how Trump's deportation program shuttles immigrants into lawless limbo" Uncovering the chaotic, frequent shuffling of immigrants across jurisdictions to wear them down and bypass local legal protections, leaving families in a continuous "purgatorial state."
The Guardian (October 2025) – "Trump revives family separations amid drive to deport millions" Exposing the administration's renewed practice of separating families to coerce self-deportation, Co-CEO Faisal Al-Juburi noted: "This is a tactic to punish people for not acquiescing. It's a tactic to get immigrants to relent, to agree to self-deport."
Newsweek (December 2025) – "Donald Trump's Border Patrol Weapons Spending Skyrockets" Revealing the massive ramp-up in spending on indiscriminate weaponry for DHS staff, drawing condemnation from RAICES leadership regarding the misallocation of resources toward inflicting harm.
Financial Review
Our external auditors (Lane Gorman Trubitt, LLC) issued an unmodified opinion—the highest standard of financial validation—confirming zero material weaknesses or deficiencies across our audited programs for fiscal year 2024. Fiscal year 2025 financials are pending audit completion; audited statements and Form 990 will be made publicly available in fall 2026, in accordance with federal regulatory requirements.
Our (unaudited) 2025 financial performance continues to reflect how our organization uses its resources with discipline. While our overall operational revenue contracted due to slashed federal subcontracts and sub-grants, a 40% increase in unrealized gains and a resilient philanthropic portfolio generated a Net Income of $3.6M.
Income Statement
(For the Year Ended December 31, 2025)
Revenue
Program Services (Client, Contract): $13,098,305
Philanthropic + Grant (Individual, Institutional): $16,358,761
Investment + Miscellaneous: $1,857,215
Total Revenue: $31,314,281
Expenses
Program Services: $22,684,900
Management and General: $3,319,741
Fundraising: $1,659,871
Total Expenses: $27,664,512
Net Income
Final Net Income: $3,649,769
Condensed Balance Sheet
(As of December 31, 2025)
Total Current Assets: $15,461,735
Investments + Long-Term Assets: $35,903,041
Total Assets: $51,364,776
Current Liabilities: $1,568,556
Long-Term Liabilities: $280,215
Total Net Assets + Equity: $49,516,005
Total Liabilities + Equity: $51,364,776
2026 Strategy: The Road Map to Autonomy
To insulate our mission from shifting federal agendas, RAICES is implementing strategic priorities designed to build a self-sustaining organizational infrastructure:
Financial Sovereignty via Shared-Cost Services: Launched in January 2026, our RCIS program is transitioning to an affordable shared-cost model. Capped at 50% or less of the private market rate, this creates an internal revenue growth engine to fund and subsidize entirely free services for low-income, high-risk clients.
Unrestricted "Self-Sufficiency Bridge": Anticipating further federal refugee funding rollbacks, we are developing an unrestricted fund reserve layer to step in where the government pulls out—continuing critical employment, educational navigation, and case management services.
One RAICES Culture: Breaking down operational silos to cross-train our legal, social service, and advocacy teams into a unified, collaborative force.
Board of Directors
Our Board of Directors features distinguished experts uniting deep experience across strategic philanthropy, financial governance, legal advocacy, and community vision.
Jayci Giaccone – Board Chair | Fundraising Strategist
John Walvoord – Board Treasurer | Finance Operations Specialist
Charles Garrido – Board Secretary | Strategic Wealth Advisor
Nicole Arrow – Board Member | Legal Executive and Philanthropic Advisory Expert
Salman Cheema – Board Member | Global Immigration Advisor and Legal Strategist
Olga Garza Kauffman – Board Member | Community Leader and Health Advocate
Nada Ismail – Board Member | Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright and Creative Visionary
Martyna Majok – Board Member | Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright and Creative Visionary
Benjamin Zhou – Ex-Officio Board Fellow
To read real-time updates from RAICES, visit us online at raicestexas.org.
