Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN) began as an ad-hoc coalition of immigrant rights activists and advocates in 1987 under the name Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and Services (NIRRS) in order to develop a Santa Clara County response to the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. For over a decade, the NIRRS was central to statewide campaigns against all the anti-immigration legislation and ballot initiatives that followed.

In 1998, NIRRS changed its name to Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN) and received seed funding to hire staff and establish the county's first-ever multilingual information hotline. Since that time, SIREN has grown to include policy analysis and advocacy, community education, citizenship application assistance, and community and service provider trainings.