01/09/2026
The Willows Project is a non-profit social service organization in southwest Ohio. Incorporated in 2021, The Willows Project is a 501(c)(3) public charity serving immigrant families in northern Hamilton County and southern Butler County. Founded in 2016 in a donated apartment in the former Willows apartment complex, our organization emerged from direct community presence, trust-building, and long-term volunteer engagement. These roots continue to shape our approach: culturally responsive, relationship-driven, and connecting families to the services they rely on in ways that feel safe and accessible to them.
Please allow us to introduce you to 2 of the families needing help. All names have been changed to protect family privacy.
The Ramirez family has been broken up and needs community support for rent, food, clothing, and detention phone account privileges. The family is made up of a grandmother named Juana, her 2 adult sons, Carlos and Pablo, and her granddaughter. The sons worked to support the family, but they are both in ICE detention. Carlos is in the Butler Co. Jail in Hamilton, OH, and Pablo is at North Lake Correctional Facility in Butler, MI. Juana has Type I diabetes and depends on daily insulin injections to live. She can’t read or write because her family couldn’t afford to send her to school, and she tries to survive on odd jobs. The granddaughter is only 12, and misses her dad, Carlos. Juana came to the US for opportunities for her family to succeed, and to escape threats from a local money lender.
The Ortiz Family is struggling with many issues. ICE called the mom, Susana, into their Blue Ash office for an unscheduled meeting about her asylum application this summer. She was told to bring her 4 children and all their passports (3 eldest children were born in Guatemala). She went to the ICE office with her children and their passports, where the passports were confiscated, and Susana was put in detention on an ICE hold, then deported back to Guatemala. The father of the family, Juan, supported the family on his wages as a landscaper, but he lost his job in the fall. Juan has since been hospitalized for unexpected health issues, and now just wants to go back to Guatemala with his children to reunite with Susana. To do so, the family needs help with their current rent, food, and clothing needs, passport replacements, new passport for US-born child, and airfare to Guatemala.
Situations like these were uncommon a year ago, but the increase in ICE activity throughout the United States has created many more like them. People with no criminal backgrounds, who are seeking asylum through the channels dictated by our government, are being detained for “being brown” and “looking like illegals”. They do not receive the due process guaranteed to all people within our borders and are deported back to often dangerous situations in their countries of origin. Like the ancestors of most Americans, they came here for a better life, and they followed our procedures for asylum.
To donate or volunteer to help our community, please click on our link WillowsProject.org.
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Thank you!
Elaine Dulovich
The Willows Project
[email protected]
WillowsProject.org
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