NEW ORLEANS - Sitting at her desk inside of First Grace United Methodist Church in Mid-City, Angela Davis is working hard to give little immigrant children a better life.
"Most of our work is a direct representation of children who are in immigration proceedings, and who have immigration cases," Davis said.
Davis is the Executive Director of First Grace Community Alliance, a non-profit organization which overseas Project Ishmael, a legal clinic helping immigrant children seek asylum and begin a path towards citizenship.
"Most of our cases are taking about three to five years right now. That's for lawful permanent residence. Not even citizenship," Davis said.
Shawn Moses Anglim is the Pastor of First Grace United Methodist Church.
"We have over 40 special juvenile immigrant cases. We are winning all 40 of those cases, which has proven to use that if this child has adequate representation, they have a case to be made and the issue is getting them representation," Anglim said.
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Anglim says thousands of undocumented immigrants across the country are not as lucky. He says seeing the separation of families at the border hurts his spirit.
"What's happened on the border it sort of reminds us, what even a country like ours can do. It can round up children and cage them," Anglim said.
Feeling the political heat and public backlash, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order Wednesday, temporarily banning the separation of families prosecuted for crossing the border. President Trump, however, made it clear his "Zero Tolerance Policy" still stands.
"It's about keeping families together, while at the same time, being sure that we hae a very powerful, very strong border," President Trump said.
"Detaining families together is not a solution. It's not a solution to anything," Davis said.
"If we really wanted to address why there are thousands of people suddenly showing up, we would probably need to ask ourselves what has happened in those countries that they're coming from, in the last 50 years. And what has been our involvement in those countries," Anglim said.
Right now, Davis says they're trying to find more funding to hire a second attorney so that they can triple the number of children they can represent.
Caresse Jackman can be reached at cjackman@wwltv.com.