About the fund

A community that shows up when it matters most.

A network of community leaders, legal experts, and trained volunteers, supporting our immigrant neighbors since 2018.

What we do

When someone is detained, their family shouldn't have to face it alone.

An arrest can upend a family in a single afternoon. Income stops, a car sits in a lot no one can reach, and kids come home to an empty house.

3R provides wrap-around care at no cost to families. We connect each family with a lawyer to pursue bond, habeas corpus, temporary guardianship, and other legal paths, and pair that lawyer with trained, supervised community volunteers who handle the practical side, recovering vehicles and property, accompanying families to court, helping navigate commissary access, and assisting with whatever else comes up along the way.

Our story

It started because the need was already here

We got going in 2018 because people in our community kept ending up in the same spot: someone's husband, brother, mom, was picked up, and the family had no idea how to find them, get them home, or who could represent them in court. It started with bond funds and legal costs. Over time, we learned that the damage detention does to a family goes far beyond that.

Enforcement around here has picked up a lot in the last couple years. People are getting swept up over a busted taillight, after living here ten or twenty years with a family, a job, a mortgage. Some of the folks we help are from places where going back isn't safe. We try not to be dramatic about what we do, but we also won't pretend it isn't serious.

Rooted in Experience and Community

Meet the founding board members

It's a small board on purpose: people who've spent years building real relationships in this community, not a fundraising committee.

Don Sherman

Civil Rights Director, LULAC–Cincinnati

Retired attorney with a long record of civil rights work in the Cincinnati immigrant community.

Nancy Sullivan

Executive Director, Transformations–CDC

Leads community development work in Price Hill, Ohio, with deep ties to neighborhood-level support networks.

Sister Alice Gerdeman

Sisters of Divine Providence, Melbourne, KY

Former executive director of the Intercommunity Justice & Peace Center in Cincinnati and provincial superior for her order.

Jeff Richardson

Co-Founder & Organizer

Former senior vice president with Fifth Third Bank in Cincinnati and founding board member of the Esperanza Latino Center in Covington, KY.