One day in April, a Central American family seeking asylum prepared to cross the border from Mexico to the US. Learn about their arduous journey and how dozens of dedicated advocates and humanitarians played vital roles in getting them to safety. Immigration attorneys, Rebecca Eichler and Careen Shannon are joined by award-winning documentary filmmaker, Victoria Bruce. This power house team is behind the upcoming feature-length documentary, Las Abogadas: Attorneys on the Front Lines of the Migrant Crisis.
Victoria Bruce is a Documentary Filmmaker and author with a passion for human rights and a long history of working on dramatic and sometimes dangerous non-fiction stories in Latin America. She has had her films in over 50 film festivals including IDFA and Sundance, and has had films acquired by HBO, CBS, History Channel, Netflix, Hulu and PBS. She is the recipient of many film festival awards as well as a duPont-Columbia University Award. Victoria has made several trips to the US-Mexico border while producing Las Abogadas.
Rebecca Eichler has over 20 years of experience practicing immigration law in the Washington DC area and providing disaster legal aid around the world, working with clients seeking protection under U.S. & international law. She currently lives and works in Mexico as a human rights advocate, advising deportees from the U.S, migrants in transit, and asylum seekers at the US border. In fall 2018, she spearheaded central Mexico’s legal aid response to the migrant caravans, providing individual consultations and know-your-rights presentations to hundreds of migrants on what to expect at the border. Rebecca is one of the main characters of Las Abogadas.
Careen Shannon is an attorney, writer and former law professor who has focused on U.S. immigration law and policy for nearly 30 years. She is the co-author of several books, and the author of hundreds of articles, about immigration law and global migration. She has made numerous trips to the U.S.-Mexico border to provide pro bono legal services to immigrant families held by the U.S. government in detention camps in New Mexico and Texas. She also sits on the Board of Directors of Safe Passage Project, a New York-based nonprofit that provides free lawyers to immigrant youth and the Latin American Relief Fund, which supports Albergue ABBA, a migrant shelter in central Mexico.
Organizations mentioned in the presentation include:
Latin American Relief Fund
https://latinamericanrelieffund.org/
Senda de Vida Shelter, Reynosa
https://www.ministeriosendadevida.com
Global Response Management
https://www.global-response.org/
Resource Center Matamoros
http://resourcecentermatamoros.org
Team Brownsville
https://www.teambrownsville.org/
Miles4Migrants
https://miles4migrants.org/
Asylee Women Enterprise
https://www.asyleewomen.org/
Las Abogadas Documentary
https://www.lasabogadasfilm.com/