Accompanying immigrants as they negotiate an unjust system
"It’s easy to think of the border as some remote, far-off place, but the truth is that there are detention centers in nearly every state."
Alejandra Oliva, who recently graduated from Harvard Divinity School, works as communications coordinator at the National Immigrant Justice Center, an organization that provides legal assistance to immigrants. Last year she visited the border between San Diego and Tijuana, where she provided translation and accompaniment services to people seeking asylum as they waited to cross into the U.S.
How did you first become interested in working with migrants at the Mexico border?
I got into this work by reading Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends. In it, she describes interpreting for children who came across the border during the 2014 unaccompanied child migrant crisis. As I read, I realized for the first time that I could do something about the ways that immigrants were encountering the United States and the immigration system. So I started working as a volunteer interpreter for people who were applying for asylum. Later I began doing immigration court observation, and eventually I was able to travel to Tijuana to see what the border is actually like.
