Things are happening now that are unlike anything that's ever happened to before.

It's not that there have been changes in the statutes since then that every agency, every policy, is being rewritten or weaponized And it's happening at a pace that is beyond anything that's happened before in any administration, The fact that they have had this funding cut has a huge impact on the immigrant community, especially when we're talking about the ramping up of Ice presence.

tenemos esta necesidad de sentir en este momento, especialmente los niños.

Entonces eso es importante y es muy grande.

persecución, de presión, de vulnerabilidad.

Ahí llegamos I don't have to remind people of my humanity.

I shouldn't have to do that.

Yeah.

If you can't see how this is stripping somebody like me.

Of my humanity.

I'm not holding a space for me.

Yeah.

Poder seguir haciéndolo porque lo necesitamos más que nunca.

Y en el fondo es es eso, de de, de que el miedo no nos paraliza.

tenido, lo.

Hay.

Pero al mismo tiempo está la esperanza, está la esperanza de algo mejor.

communities across the country have felt a mass shift in immigration policies over the last year between ongoing cuts to aid programs and increased Ice deployment.

and in uncertain situations.

It's often that these immigration rights groups are really rallying around their community.

But with these funding cuts here in West Michigan, immigrants and advocates alike are linking up to protect these very groups who have served them for years.

Cuando hay tiempos de opresión, Cuando hay tiempos de miedo.

Tú necesitas estar con el otro.

Necesitas estar con más personas.

Necesitas oírte.

Necesitas cantar.

Más que importante, la poesía es importante.

La música, el arte es como la cultura y es el servicio a la comunidad.

Detrás de cada comida significa que hay personas.

Detrás de cada tarea hay un campesino de campesino que sembrar la tierra.

Entonces tú vas detrás y detrás de esa comida también tienes consumo ancestral.

Porque si yo preparo empanadas de la manera en que nací y el día viene después.

Y lo mismo pasa con la comida que está mal la saliva, el arroz con gandules.

sostenimiento del lindo de poder juntarse, porque lo necesitan más que nunca.

Más que nunca.

¿Por qué tengo que decir eso?

Podemos vivir con eso.

Y lo que hace mucho gusto que ponernos el sentido del mapuche y el sentido del universo es la armonía.

hay días en que piensan que no sea así.

Toda la gente que está detrás mío, de mis antepasados y también los antepasados de cada una de las personas que están aquí.

Porque no es solamente Chile, vino.

Venezolano, todos están representados.

Cada uno de We are here to raise money for the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center after the Trump administration, cut federal funding for their unaccompanied minors program.

So what that means is they no longer have funds to pay to represent children in immigration court for their cases.

some beautiful friends who I have known and worked with for almost 20 years at this point.

came to us and said, we want to do something to support the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center and make sure that we are there for the community for the long term.

And so they have put together this lovely evening, and it really has been a beautiful group effort.

What's the history of, I guess, that comradery in that partnership between Merck and the immigrant refugee community?

Well, I mean, work is illegal resource center for Michigan's immigrant communities.

And so in so many ways, certainly we are present to our clients, our direct representation clients who we advocate for and who we represent in immigration and nationality cases.

But then we really have three pillars of our advocacy.

So it's that direct representation as well as systemic advocacy and community engagement.

And so one of the things we really try to do is, when we see the struggles our clients are having, when we see the way the system doesn't work for them, or when we see the issues that that people have.

We do that systemic advocacy and we talk to community leaders.

So, so many of the people organizing the event tonight, some of them have been our clients, but many of them, have worked in other helping professions and worked in the schools.

Have been the people who have brought, client or a child to us and said, can you help us figure out what happened to their mom or dad, or can you help us understand, why all of a sudden this child who is ready to go into the workforce doesn't have a Social Security number, even though they've lived here for so long?

All the different things that come up for people.

That's largely how I've met the members of this collective group.

is through, through our clients, through our cases, through our advocacy, through the years.

Well specifically when we're talking about Michigan, they are as far as I know, one of if not the only nonprofit that represents clients in court.

Okay.

this, work is incredibly tedious, and it is incredibly, taxing.

And so a lot of nonprofits, because they have such limited resources as is a very long stick with the family petitions.

So, filing for families overseas, renewing a permanent residency card or citizenship, a lot of them do not represent immigrants in immigration court if they need it.

And so, Mark being the only the only nonprofit, as far as I know, that even has offices across the state.

every day I look at our statewide mail and I get to speak you it's like if you only got six work permits for our clients today, we've got four green cards in the mail.

We got naturalization ceremony notices.

I, I love doing that.

I get to see that.

And to have the members of the collective will say, we know that what we need to do right now is support me.

It tells me that they see it too.

They see it too, when they see problems being resolved for individual clients, that they see it too, when they want to know how to do stronger advocacy and use our social media or use our website and what they're doing for their community.

The immigration system is just unbelievably difficult for you to navigate.

So we care not only about, well, certainly primarily about results for our clients and also about trying to be a bridge between what the system is and what the community needs to exist within it.

The fact that they have had this funding cut and had to lay off a few of their workers has a huge impact on the immigrant community, especially when we're talking about the ramping up of Ice presence.

Immigration legal services are vital for, everyone who's a non-citizen who is trying to get or maintain immigration status or improve their immigration status.

And they're very, very costly.

until this spring, we had, a certain amount of federal funding that supported our work, for example.

We had a federal grant that allowed us to represent mentally incompetent people who are detained in immigration detention in the county jails.

I'm obviously not someone who's in a position to hire a lawyer at their own expense.

Right.

We had a federal grant that allowed us to represent children who are in federal immigration custody.

That's typically going to be foster care.

And we had a federal grant to do this amazing informational help desk at the immigration law to just give people a little bit of information, a little bit of language access, so that they could know how to kind, to move forward in their own case, the immigration has all of that federal funding has been terminated.

It's been a wild rise of litigation.

Some of is back for a time.

But it's mostly somewhere between gone and very uncertain.

And that obviously threatens our ability to provide the full range of services that we provide to the community.

So we've actually already lost a lot of staff through attrition, even though we've overall mostly been able to maintain our programs.

If if there are not some significant changes in terms of the sustainability of federal or state or local dollars coming in and for our programs, we will be a much smaller organization serving a much smaller number of clients.

And we may have to withdraw from representing even some of the children we represent in deportation proceedings.

And so just to bring that really into focus.

The immigration law does not provide, a right to a lawyer at government expense, even for children or even for people with mental, mental competency issues or to the indigenous people.

And so, you know, a child as young as that, truly an infant.

We've represented through this program and would not have a lawyer and would have to go along to immigration court.

Right now, because of the programing, we've been able to do that rarely, if ever, happens in Michigan.

That would trend more towards the norm if the children's federal dollars to teaching, you not only, know, I think unsettles a fundamental sense of fairness that almost anyone would have.

A child would have to represent themself in a complex legal proceeding against a government lawyer.

But also, we mostly win cases for our children.

Most of the children we represent are eligible for being who are eligible for asylum are eligible for relief, and most unrepresented children and unrepresented people generally do not win.

Their case is an immigration court.

And so it's not just that that day is a painful, terrifying, unfair day for a child.

It's really the difference between a child having a full and stable life with an immigration benefit they're legally entitled to, and a child being deported or living without status for some indefinite period of time in the U.S.

and as of Friday, it means that on their 18th birthday, the child is likely to go straight to adult immigration detention in one of our county jails.

Wow Friday, October 3rd, the government announced its intention.

To detaining almost all immigrant children.

In adult detention on their 18th birthday, which would represent certainly an impressive for most children in Michigan.

So when you think about what it means to not give a child a lawyer to pursue their legal claim during their age of minority and then jailed them for having failed to obtain immigration status by turning 18?

That is the world that we are today.

So it is a really important time for us to look to other supporters and, and try to keep our services going for the greatest number of people possible.

Ellos.

Estoy muy conmovida.

Conmovida Con esa solidaridad.

Cuando dijimos.

Estos son niños solamente por.

Y por algo que es tan importante como mis raíces.

Porque necesitamos al mismo tiempo estar juntos.

Y cuando estamos haciendo esto, es precioso.

Nuestro amigo Miguel hizo el ají de gallina y tomó el día libre y lo que significa para una persona.

Y cuando uno trabaja, todo es mucho.

Y Luis también.

Ayer, el amor que ustedes hace las empanadas.

Fue un turno de gente que iba, llegaba, llegaba, no.

Y entre todos hicimos eso.

Entonces eso es súper emocionante.

Yo creo que es porque tenemos esta necesidad de sentir en este momento, especialmente los niños.

Entonces eso es importante y es muy grande.

De persecución, de presión, de vulnerabilidad.

Ahí llegamos Sí, ya sé que viene del final de.

Hoy.

Y mi historia más simple es muy, muy, Eh.

Mmm.

Es en el sentido de que el amor nunca, nunca es.

Feliz con mi familia.

Y de hecho, estaba estudiando y conocí al que ahora es mi marido.

Y es más que nada eso viene por ahí.

Historiador al mismo tiempo, inmigrante en el que estés tú sola.

Yo criar mis hijos allá en Chile, que querían acá.

Entonces nuestra familia no está aquí.

La familia de mi esposo.

Entonces lo que generemos un amigo o amiga con la que hemos criado, nuestras hijas, nuestros hijos y siempre estamos juntos.

Eso es lo que aprendimos.

Hoy, amigos y amigas.

1001 Iluminación de un privilegio.

Pero al mismo tiempo, eh, Como trabajadora social yo trabajo mucho también con la comunidad y siempre he aprendido tanto.

Hemos aprendido tanto de ello.

Es como he trabajado y ahora son líderes y me encanta.

Me encanta decirlo.

when I first immigrated to the United States, I came from Australia as an Australian citizen.

So my immigration story is in, August or September of 92.

I was four and we immigrated from Peru to Sydney, Australia, specifically because they had a permanent residency program for Stem, professions My mom applied, told my dad nothing.

She got the residency and at that time through was undergoing a lot of socioeconomic turmoil.

There was a, it all.

There was a battle.

And, we just kind of got a military dictatorship and hyperinflation and all those things.

So I'm on the fly, got it.

And basically said, it's here if we want it.

What do you say?

we stayed in Australia from 92 to about early 97.

We became citizens in 96.

We fully had no intention on immigrating.

My dad had no upward mobility and he was traveling a lot to different areas of the world because he was good at what he was doing.

Yeah, I was an industrial engineer.

And so they would kind of call him to a pair of machines.

And so in I guess it was January of 97, he, recruited to work in Dallas.

And so we immigrated from Australia to Dallas By 2003.

My dad was starting to shift.

Priorities had reached out to our contact here in Grand Rapids, and that's how we moved up here.

And we actually became U.S.

citizens.

I became a U.S.

citizen in March 2009. my dad got his work visa because we technically applied as Australian citizens.

Right?

That's how we were able to supersede a line.

Or there was a shorter line to leave Australia.

There's no like, circumstances like that when we're looking at immigration where it's like, okay, how long is the line for your country?

after I graduated with my undergrad, it was 2010, recession was hitting hard and there were very bleak job outcomes.

And I was able to apply for the Diocese of Grand Rapids, which was essentially the Catholic Church, specifically Hispanic ministry.

Okay.

During my first month there, there, the Catholic Charities program that had an immigration round, shut down.

And.

A response to that was opening up a new office.

I became the administrative assistant.

Okay.

And so I worked with a, an amazing group of not only accredited individuals, but also staff attorneys.

and that's when I kind of realized, like, I don't know, the process that got me here.

I have to keep in mind here, one thing that I can say is I remember sitting in us, I remember playing with broken So it was a lot of kids that were coming in because I was the administrative assistant.

I was kind of interacting with them quite a bit.

During the time that I was working at immigration, we also, happened.

Effective immediately.

The Department of Homeland Security is taking steps to lift the shadow of deportation from these young people And that was, another onslaught of different emotions of, like, okay, these young people would really have no benefit.

Like, there wouldn't be.

They wouldn't be able to work.

They didn't have access to driver's licenses.

Right.

And so if you are having to wait two hours to get anywhere in the city.

Having a driver's license is a process.

Yeah.

es.

Es de mucho miedo.

Y uno de los miedos que yo tuve cuando niña tenía miedo que se iban a ver viviendo en una dictadura militar y sabiendo que mi papá era una persona que estaba disidente.

Dices Todo Hubo un momento en que la policía llevaba a las personas y las desaparecieron.

Entonces, en este momento yo creo que sí.

Lo mismo en el sentido de las familias que separan.

El dolor de los niños y ese dolor de los niños me me.

¿Rompe el corazón, mi sentido de migración tiene que la gran mayoría de las personas no se va de un lado a otro solamente porque se te ocurrió un día irte.

Siempre hay una causa.

Siempre hay pasión.

Y las razones muchas veces pueden ser pues puedes, Hay problemas climáticos, pueden haber problemas políticos, puedes sentirte más seguro.

Muchas veces lo pasa con tus hijos Entonces es por eso más importante.

Yo tengo que tener conversaciones con mis.

Porque siempre es importante mantener el estado de las personas.

A todas las personas.

Eh.

Que nos tiene que comunicar con los demás.

Y lo peor que puede pasar.

¿Y eso es lo que está ahí, eh?

¿Cómo podemos proteger?

Puede en el.

Fondo que que nos presentan en ese momento, y eso es lo que nos.

Son un grupo de amigos y amigas y nos vemos hacer algo parecido.

Y en este caso tan importante como apoyar a mi hijo, no solamente es por mí, es por la comunidad, es también para nosotros.

Necesitamos hacer algo que en el fondo yo los llamo, los convoco, pero en el fondo no puedo llamar y convocar, no sin que ellos digan sí, no pasa nada.

¿Entonces es importante también eso de que podemos hacer algo, Y lo otro que hemos hablado inicialmente, siempre importante en términos de del miedo, en los casos más importante, de más de quitarte la poesía.

La belleza es la risa.

Y con todo este grupo nos reímos mucho y encuentro que más importante que nunca es.

Importante porque en el fondo, cuando te burlas de todo lo hacen más pequeño.

Y en el fondo te puedo decir que habitualmente tú tienes esa risa.

Con tus amigos, con tu familia.

Y que cuando uno está con la familia y para mí es súper importante, si estoy haciendo yo esto aquí es porque estoy pensando en mi abuela.

Iba y salía a ayudar a la otra persona.

En La Matanza mi papá organizó el papá que mi papá murió Percy en el fondo fue perseguido.

Sin trabajo y sin poder contar.

Trabajó los 49 años y siguió organizándose con otras personas.

Para mí pudo hacerlo y luchó por 18 años.

there's a lot of immigrants out in the community that because they came through our doors, I see their names written in my handwriting on another attorney's handwriting.

And then I see their name in print and they're doing amazing things.

Are running departments.

They're like doing all of these initiative work.

They're introducing like state representatives at different rallies and at different events because of just the benefit of having them present in community and Yeah.

And it's just so overwhelming.

Like I really am just like I'm, I just want to follow my dreams.

Yeah.

I'm so proud of you.

I want to say that, you know, I know.

It's only by miracle that I'm able to be safe like this.

I don't want to wait until they're coming for me.

Because they're coming for me.

I don't want you to be used as a scapegoat.

And so if I could say anything I can just say until and.

I will be.

The loudest voice in when it comes to protecting you.

Yeah.

Because you deserve it.

Because I deserve.

Because they deserve it.

Thanks for watching.

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