The Heising-Simons Foundation Wants to End the Criminalization of Immigrants. What’s It Funding?
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End Operation Lonestar protest in Austin, TX. Photo Credit: Montinique Monroe
Based in Los Altos and San Francisco, the Heising-Simons Foundation is a family foundation established by Mark Heising and Liz Simons, daughter of the late hedge fund tycoon Jim Simons, in 2007. Its grantmaking is focused on four programs: climate and energy; education; human rights; science, as well as technology and society.
Like many California-based funders, Heising-Simons supports a lot of immigration-related work. It does so through its Human Rights program, which seeks to show how structural racism and the oppression of poor and vulnerable communities manifest in our society through systems of punishment, namely mass incarceration and immigrant detention. As the foundation’s website states, this has resulted in the disproportionate criminalization of low-income people of color, as well as other vulnerable communities, and is discernible in their overrepresentation in jails, prisons and detention centers while being under-resourced in terms of economic, political and social justice.
To change that, Heising-Simons seeks to shift power away from systems of punishment and toward those who have been impacted by mass criminalization, as well as dismantle systems of punishment in the U.S. and work toward reimagined approaches to justice that invest in communities and promote practices of healing and community accountability that are rooted in our common humanity.
“Our Human Rights program really takes the lens of looking at people directly impacted by mass criminalization, whether it’s immigration, punishment policies or mass incarceration writ large. Our work from that lens is really talking about the empowerment of these groups that have people that have been directly impacted to come up with a solution to build their own power,” said Angie Junck, director of the foundation’s Human Rights program.
The program invests in three key areas: (1) power-building and capacity-building for grassroots movements to dismantle systems of punishment, (2) supporting ecosystems that center grassroots community organizing across the criminal justice and immigrant rights movement, and (3) advancing approaches to safety, justice and accountability that don’t rely on punishment. That work includes policy advocacy, civic engagement and legal strategies, Junck said.
Crucially, Heising-Simons resists the “siloization of issues,” a common problem in philanthropy. Instead, it sees migrant justice and criminal justice as intersecting issues and funds the two as such. It also funds Black migrant work and trans migrant work. (See our recent updated overview on criminal justice funding here.)
“A lot of the migrant justice groups that we fund really understand the intersectionality of immigrant justice with other issues of criminalization, so they are able to work across sectors… across issue areas, to really, truly build power for impacted communities,” said Heising-Simons Program Officer Rose Cahn.
Heising-Simons supports both national and state-based organizations. On the national side, the foundation is a major backer of the Four Freedoms Fund, a collaborative that supports the immigrant justice movement and related organizations. Other national grantees include the Black Migrant Power Fund, the Haitian Bridge Alliance, Transgender Law Center, Trans Justice Funding Project, Detention Watch Network, Border Network for Human Rights, United We Dream, Mijente, the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, National Immigration Law Center and Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
In 2024, Heising-Simons has invested $9.4 million through its Human Rights program thus far, but that number will likely increase as the year progresses. Since 2010, Heising-Simons has invested more than $86 million for its immigration and criminal justice work.
Approaches in California and Texas
In addition to its national grants, Heising-Simons supports immigrant justice work across four key states: California, Texas, Georgia and North Carolina. According to the foundation, these four states are “of national importance to shrink and ultimately dismantle carceral systems and reimagine new approaches to safety, justice and accountability.”
Different states have to contend with different threats and opportunities, and Heising-Simons’ funding reflects that. In California, the foundation has been a pretty big funder of legal services support but has since shifted away from that since the state itself helps fund nonprofits that offer legal support for immigrants (although the governor’s office has recently proposed budget cuts to the program).
“Because we take this power-building lens, we often gravitate towards kind of being a pathfinder funder for new coalitions and emergent opportunities where grassroots groups are coming together to really dream and scheme about what’s possible,” Cahn said.
For example, the foundation has supported Dignity Not Detention Coalition, which consists of organizations working to abolish immigrant detention centers in California. It also provides reentry support for community members who have been released from detention centers. According to Cahn, the coalition understands that immigration detention doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and, as such, works to find strategic opportunities to build with criminal justice partners who work to shut down jails and prisons.
The foundation has also supported the Budget 2 Save Lives coalition, which consists of Californians United for a Responsible Budget, Dignity Not Detention and Justice LA, and represents more than 150 grassroots organizations. Budget 2 Save Lives seeks to move the state toward a “care first” future by divesting away from systems of incarceration and policing and toward healing and rehabilitation. In addition to funding coalitions, Heising-Simons also provides core support to organizations throughout the state.
The foundation uses the same theory to guide its grantmaking in Texas, funding both grassroots groups and coalitions. “Texas is kind of ground zero for the criminalization of immigrants,” Cahn said. “We see the conversation in Texas impacting the national conversation, not just about immigration but about democracy as a whole.”
Heising-Simons has worked closely with emerging grassroots communities and groups in Texas to respond to Gov. Greg Abbot’s Operation Lone Star — an $11 billion border initiative that has been criticized for racial profiling and unconstitutional policing — and SB 4, which would allow law enforcement officials to detain and jail anyone they believe entered the state illegally.
For instance, the foundation has helped connect organizers in Texas who are fighting against Operation Lone Star and SB4 with organizers from Arizona who successfully pushed back against SB 1070 (a bill similar to SB 4).
Heising-Simons was also one of the earliest funders of a coalition, Texans United for Justice, bringing together migrant justice groups from across the state to build power at the local level to push back against Gov. Abbott’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and decisions.
Many of Texas’ border communities don’t have a robust 501(c)(3) infrastructure, Cahn said. Heising-Simons provides funding for Texans United for Justice so that it can work with local individuals to organize within their communities. The coalition’s anchor organizations can provide capacity-building support for border organizers.
“We’re seeing an emergence of different types of very hyper-local organizing that’s being supported by this core set of 19 groups that have come together as part of this coalition, and many of these groups we fund individually, as well,” Cahn said.
Narrative change
One area of funding Heising-Simons is looking to expand is its support for narrative change work. Narrative change is still a relatively new topic in philanthropy, but it can be particularly important when it comes to immigration. Despite the common refrain of America being a nation of immigrants, anti-immigrant sentiment — and consequently, punitive anti-immigrant policies — is prevalent in the U.S., and not just among conservatives.
“We’ve long understood that narrative is an important tool in movement work, but I think we’re starting to build out a deeper understanding of the different components of narrative work, whether that’s shared movement narrative infrastructure or whether that’s strategic comms opportunities,” Cahn said. “I think whatever we do will be through the lens of trying to help impacted communities build their own power to tell their own stories.”
Junck pointed to the Comm-Unity Network — a “national network of communicators” who work to end the criminalization of immigrants and people of color — as an example of the kind of work communications can do in this space.
“We have [Comm-Unity] at a national level, but can we create more comms hubs for some of our folks that build on the infrastructure that’s necessary to do this work, and that would be more specific for Texas or parts of California?” Junck wondered. “That would be something I think we’ve been talking about generally with people across the sector, since everyone wants narrative change but they don’t want to fund the people that do it or the people that can help put that work together.”
Funding narrative change can be a tough ask for philanthropy. As Junck pointed out, changing people’s hearts and minds doesn’t simply happen overnight. It requires organizing. It requires strategic communications. And most difficult of all, it requires shifts in broader cultural trends, including at the level of popular culture.
A 2022 report commissioned by the Convergence Partnership suggests funding narrative change through a hefty combination of backing mass media (journalism, nonfiction, and analysis), mass culture (popular culture and entertainment) and mass movement (organizing and adjacent storytelling, arts and culture).
At the most basic level, changing a narrative requires allowing people to get their messages out, which can be difficult for organizations that don’t have the capacity to hire communications workers. Filling that gap is a potential role philanthropy can play, although we’ll have to see where Heising-Simons takes its narrative change funding in a continued era of uncertainty and danger for many new arrivals to the U.S.
“We’re hearing from the groups that this is something they want to build out, and we’re obviously seeing the absolute necessity from an issue perspective,” Cahn said.
