About Bay Area Center
for Immigration Evaluations
our founding story
Bay Area Center for Immigration Evaluations was founded by Ellie Vargas, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, in Oakland, California.
Ellie's professional experience has always been in immigrant-heavy communities in the Bay Area and New York City. In 2013, when she launched her private psychotherapy practice in Oakland, she began offering mental health evaluations for immigration attorneys.
Ellie soon had more referrals than she could accommodate and began thinking about how to expand this service. The goals became: to serve more clients, keep fees affordable, and support other like-minded clinicians in offering this service as an adjunct to their own private practices.
Bay Area Center for Immigration Evaluations currently contracts with licensed clinicians throughout the Bay Area who have their own private psychotherapy practices and desire to serve the immigrant community in this way.
“One of the things I love most about this work is the privilege of knowing that, often, we are the client’s first experience with a mental health provider. It is an honor to be able to engage a client from a place of compassion, normalize their symptoms given the context of their life story, and actively de-stigmatize mental health conditions while providing hope for treatment.”
bacie values
Compassion for all people, all experiences, and all the ways we humans cope with adversity.
A commitment to thorough clinical assessments including validated symptom screening and best clinical practices.
Excellent, professionally written reports to support clinical findings.