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Langley Park is a community in Prince George’s County, Maryland, that sits mere miles from the White House.
Families from Chicago and England named Langley Park and built an 18,000 square foot Georgian Revival mansion in its center.
Today, fewer than half of Langley Park’s roughly 22,000 residents are U.S. citizens.
We Are Casa, also known as CASA, is a nonprofit organization that bought the mansion in 2009 and turned it into a multicultural center.
CASA is a “community organizing” group that offers legal advice, assistance programs, education on how to become a U.S. citizen, and other services to “Black, Latino/a/e, Afro-descendent, Indigenous, and Immigrant communities.”
Earlier this year, CASA and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project sued the Trump administration on behalf of five pregnant women in order to challenge an executive order which sought to change how birthright citizenship is interpreted.
CASA offers a day-laborer program with five locations in the Maryland area, including Langley Park, where hordes of backpack-wearing foreign men wander aimlessly through parking lots and around strip malls.
CASA provides a variety of classes to non-English-speaking children who comprise nearly half of the student population at some local schools.
CASA’s policy agenda includes objectives like abolishing ICE, protecting DACA, reviving TPS and DED, and defending due process in immigration court.
CASA strongly condemned members of Congress who voted in support of the Laken Riley Act and encourages activists to monitor and report ICE operations to the local community.
CASA’s total revenue exceeded $23 million in Fiscal Year 2024, with at least 37% of its funding coming from local, state, and federal governments.
CASA’s mission has expanded over the years. Where once it focused almost exclusively on services like English lessons, job training, help with immigration status, and housing assistance, the organization now aggressively lobbies local governments and the State House on issues such as universal health care, environmental justice, rent control, immigration reform, and more.
CASA activists were a noisy presence in the Montgomery County Council hearing room in 2023 as the council debated — and eventually passed — a measure to bring rent control to a market where affordable housing comes at a premium. The organization was a major player in the coalition that succeeded in forcing the passage of the highly controversial legislation and has been unafraid of criticizing political leaders who oppose CASA’s views or are seen as insufficiently supportive.
Places like Langley Park will continue to exist with significant involvement from organizations like CASA, and sanctuary states like Maryland will continue to be havens for illegal aliens.
