The Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the few nonprofit organizations providing pro bono legal counsel to immigrants across the southern U.S., laid off 78 workers on June 12, gutting a quarter of its workforce and dismantling programs that work directly with incarcerated immigrants. The decision has ignited frustration from workers who are accusing the organization of hypocrisy and abandoning its core mission. Among those dismissed were 61 union members and more than 20 supervisors, many of whom are people of color actively working in the Deep South—a region historically fraught with racial tensions and inequalities.

“We were blindsided,” said Lisa Wright, unit chair of the SPLC Union, who was laid off. “They notified us of the layoffs in a morning meeting without specifics, leaving us scrambling to understand and support those affected.”

Advocates and former workers argue that SPLC’s leadership, under president and CEO Margaret Huang, strayed from its commitment to defending human rights. The layoffs targeted key programs, including the Immigrant Justice Project, the Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative (SIFI), and significant portions of the Learning for Justice program. The SIFI program, established in 2017 amidst heightened anti-immigrant actions during the Trump administration, aimed to provide vital legal representation to immigrants detained in Georgia. These programs are recognized for their critical roles in supporting marginalized communities, particularly in combating systemic injustices in the Deep South.

“Our direct representation teams in places like Lumpkin and Folkston [in Georgia] were critical lifelines for immigrants facing detention and deportation,” said Gracie Willis, who was among those laid off. “With SPLC pulling out, there’s a void that no other nonprofit can fill.”

In an emailed statement to Prism, a spokesperson from SPLC said, “The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is undergoing an organizational restructuring. We are taking steps to streamline our activities and operations to strengthen our ability to advance a multiracial, inclusive democracy and ground our work in the perspectives and priorities of communities most affected by human rights violations.”

Instead of bolstering these efforts, former workers claim that the organization has become increasingly top-heavy with highly paid senior staff, many of whom are based outside the Deep South, undermining its credibility and effectiveness in the region.

Wright and Willis were first driven to work at SPLC because of a shared mission to end immigration detention.

“A person sent us an email and said, ‘I think you’re going to find it difficult to get institutional support for your radical ideas,’ and we sort of took that on as a badge of honor,” Willis said. “We took that on as our internal slogan being, radical ideas, institutional support. And that’s why I stayed at SPLC, because we had this team with this beautiful vision for what the world could look like.”

Wright had worked with the organization for more than 24 years, Willis with the organization for seven, and both were part of the original organizing committee to form the union. Both say SPLC has been deliberately union-busting, pointing out that a significant portion of those laid off were union members.

“This was a direct attack on our union, especially as we gear up for contract negotiations,” Wright said.

The behavior follows a pattern of union-busting that Wright and Willis say goes back to when they first formed the union in December 2019 and were forced into an election. The union ratified their first contract in 2022.

“The unionization process [was] like ‘The Hunger Games,’ different levels of difficulty,” Wright said.

In November 2019, SPLC hired Hunton Andrews Kurth, a Richmond, Virginia-based law firm known for advising businesses against “corporate campaigns” by unions. The workers were forced to an election and won a majority of votes in favor of the union.

As the emails informing workers they were laid off began to roll in on June 12, Willis and Wright say they were shocked. They began fielding emails from workers on parental leave, workers whose families rely on their income, and many other workers seeking clarity on what this meant.

“As Lisa and I got our own emails, we’re also trying to reassure the people that we as stewards are supposed to be able to protect,” Willis said. “That day was one of the hardest days of my life, and I’ve been doing deportation defense for a decade.”

The layoffs have sparked outrage among community partners and supporters who relied on the organization’s services.

“They seem to be making decisions based solely on financial numbers without considering the human cost or the mission they were built to serve,” Willis said.

Meredyth Yoon, who worked as a SIFI attorney for four years from 2018 to 2021, and is now the litigation director of one of SPLC’s partner organizations, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, emphasized the critical role of the program.

“It was truly devastating to hear the news about SIFI being discontinued … especially as detention funding at the federal level is reaching an all time high,” said Yoon. “SPLC’s decision to discontinue the SIFI program right now is especially cruel and untimely, and I really hope that they would reconsider that decision.”

According to Yoon, SPLC is co-counsel with Asian Americans Advancing Justice’s Immigrant Justice cases.

“It touches on a number of our ongoing litigation matters. It impacts a lot of the advocacy that we’re a part of, and I think that we’re still really grappling with understanding the full extent of the impact that this is going to have on our work,” Yoon said.

Monica Whatley, who served as a senior project coordinator, and Thereatha Redding, her colleague at SPLC, were integral in providing direct legal services to individuals detained at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, as part of the SIFI program. Whatley, who moved to Lumpkin for the position, described their roles as not just jobs but a commitment to supporting marginalized communities.

“It’s one thing for me personally to get laid off, but it’s another thing for them to completely shut down the program,” Whatley said. “We were the only ones physically in Stewart County providing pro bono representation.”

Compounding the impact is the closure of SPLC’s physical office in Lumpkin, which served as a crucial hub for providing pro bono representation to detainees.

“And at the same time that they’re closing these two offices, they are constructing a brand new office in Atlanta,” Whatley said. “It signals to me the direction that SPLC is going, and kind of moving away from the communities in rural spaces and into these larger cities. It’s particularly hitting us hard in terms of what are our next steps, because we don’t really have the luxury of other nonprofits clamoring for us.”

With no contingency plan communicated by SPLC to address this vacuum, the future looks uncertain for detainees in need of legal support.

“There will be no pro bono services for them, and that’s a big concern,” Redding said. “I know I am losing my job, but these people are in a facility, and once we leave, there is no one here to support and provide services to them. They are fearful.”

The layoffs come at a time of heightened national debate over immigration rights and educational equity. SPLC’s abrupt decision to cut staff from programs crucial to these discussions has raised questions about its strategic priorities and commitment to long-term advocacy.

Advocates and former workers suggest that SPLC’s substantial endowment of more than $660 million should have allowed for more thoughtful restructuring without such drastic personnel reductions.

For now, the future of SPLC remains uncertain, with stakeholders and the public closely watching how it will address the fallout from these controversial layoffs, regain trust in its mission, and recommit to the communities they claim to support.

According to an internal email from Huang circulated last week, the organization has created 15 positions to be offered to workers who were impacted by the layoffs, resulting in 63 of 411 positions, or 15%, eliminated. However, Willis and Whatley say they want to stop working for the organization, given the culture. In the email, Huang claims Learning for Justice is “adjusting its mission and theory of change” to be “more intentional about where [they] do this work.” Additionally, Huang says they are “shifting resources from individualized detention center representation toward more systemic litigation.”

The impact on SPLC’s ability to continue its legal and advocacy work in immigrant rights, workers’ rights, and other areas remains uncertain.

“We’re deeply concerned about the communities we serve and the colleagues who remain,” Wright said. “There’s been no clear plan from SPLC on how they intend to maintain these vital services. This isn’t just about losing jobs; it’s about losing essential support for vulnerable communities.”

Correction, Wednesday, June 26, 2024: An original version of this article incorrectly stated that the majority of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s unionized staff was laid off. The article should have instead stated that the layoffs mainly affected unionized staff. The article has been updated to reflect this.”