Rebekah Rashidfarokhi

Rebekah Rashidfarokhi was inspired to become a lawyer after college, when she took a position with an immigration clinic at the U.S.-Mexico border. A fluent Spanish speaker, Rebekah worked for a Catholic nun—a fierce Sister of Mercy with a JD from Notre Dame—who ran the immigration program which served mostly children and domestic violence victims. Rebekah planned to return to full time immigration work after law school, but then got an offer to work at Chicago Volunteer Legal Services (CVLS), an organization that supports pro bono lawyers across the city to provide free legal services to the poor and working poor. At CVLS, she began serving as a guardian ad litem (GAL) for children and quickly fell in love with the work. “It’s a unique role,” says Rebekah, “serving as an officer of the court. We are a neutral party looking out for the best interests of the child.” Rebekah now directs CVLS’s Guardian ad Litem for Minors program, and is responsible for recruiting, training, and supervising more than 200 volunteer GAL lawyers every year. She also has been able to continue using her immigration background, helping families obtain state court predicate orders in Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) cases and working with undocumented parents to put guardianship care plans in place for their children should they face immigration detention or deportation.

Rebekah, who works in Chicago’s probate court, describes herself as serving the “hidden foster care system.” Her cases involve children who have come to reside with their aunt, grandmother, or other caretaker, because their parents are unable to care for them—either because the parents are incarcerated, suffering from addiction or homelessness, are deceased, or in some cases, have been deported. These caretakers need to establish legal guardianship to make day-to-day decisions for the children they are taking in. Although these guardians are offering children a home out of the goodness of their hearts, they are not provided the support or services that foster parents receive and must navigate the system alone.

CVLS is often appointed to represent the best interests of the child in contested cases, when parents object to guardianship or seek to regain custody after guardianship is established. Again, because these cases mostly result from informal family guardianship arrangements, the resources available to parents trying to get their children back, including both legal help and assistance with social services, is extremely limited. “When we are appointed as GAL, we interview everyone in the family, including the children,” says Rebekah. “These days, we also conduct home studies, because the agency that is supposed to do that is defunded and defunct. A lot of these cases could have ended up in juvenile court where there are resources, and there should be a trauma informed advocate to check in on the family and to offer parenting classes and other services. We don’t even have a court reporter.”

While there are important benefits to keeping families out of the formal child welfare system, Rebekah wishes that the families she serves through the probate process had better access to free and low-cost services—like therapy, supervised visitation, tutoring, or mentoring—so that they can focus on rebuilding the parent-child relationship. Many of the families she serves simply cannot afford these services, and too often go without. This is part of why she feels so proud of the role that CVLS plays. “CVLS is the only legal aid organization in Cook County serving as GAL in guardianship cases. We have the unique opportunity to give these children a voice.”

Although she often works on tough and emotional cases, Rebekah loves her work. Every case is different because every child is different, and every case is a window into the life of a family. “We see many kids who end up with amazing caregivers who are giving it their all. We see kids who are thriving and doing well. We see parents overcome challenges and work hard to reunify with their children.” Those are the cases, says Rebekah, that make everything worthwhile.

Rebekah is also inspired by the many dedicated CVLS volunteers who raise their hands to help. “We have volunteers who always have a case. When they finish a case, they take a new one, no matter how busy they are, and that is really inspiring,” she says. “The fact that our GAL project is a pro bono program means I get to work with really smart people who come to me because they want to help children.”

Rebekah is also energized by the work CVLS has done to support immigrant families. Starting in 2017, CVLS began helping immigrant families put care plans into place in case parents were detained or deported. This work gave her an opportunity to use her immigration background and later to be involved in legislation that brought Illinois state law into line with federal immigration law concerning unaccompanied minors. She began working with the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), also based in Chicago, to partner on SJIS cases. In other parts of the country, SIJS cases are handled exclusively by immigration practitioners, which requires them to get up to speed on state family and juvenile court procedures. Because CVLS already had the state law experience, they offered to help the NIJC in handling the family law predicate orders required in these cases. This division of labor offers a great model for pairing state court lawyers with immigration practitioners.

Rebekah’s work continues to evolve in this area, as CVLS recently launched programs to help with bond hearings for detained immigrant parents and is exploring a program to assist with habeas petitions in immigration cases. “It’s part of the benefit of working with volunteer lawyers,” she says. “We’re able to expand our work to take advantage of the skill sets of our volunteers and to help fill service gaps. One of the wonderful things about my job is that every day I get to tell other lawyers that they too can be powerful advocates for children. Our volunteers include all types of attorneys, from recent graduates to partners in transactional practices who have never set foot in a courtroom. Everyone is always concerned that they don’t have any child law experience. I get to tell them they don’t need that. They just have to care and be willing to learn.”

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