When Flor got word that she was going to be able to make her way into the U.S. and reunite with her family last May, she was ecstatic. For more than nine months, Flor and her five-year-old daughter had been stuck in Matamoros, Mexico, living inside a two-person tent in a squalid refugee camp near the U.S. border while they waited for an immigration judge to hear their asylum claim.
 
Flor — whose full name is being omitted for her safety — and her daughter were among the roughly 60,000 asylum seekers who’d been trapped in Mexico under the Trump administration’s “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP).
 
The months she spent in Matamoros were a nightmare.Temperatures oscillated between blazing heat during the day and frigid cold at night. One of those nights, she and her daughter huddled in their tent as the sound of a gun battle between police and a local drug cartel echoed through the streets. Another time, Flor says men cornered her and demanded extortion payments. When she failed to pay, she was violently assaulted.
 
So when Flor heard that she and her daughter were going to be allowed to enter the U.S., the where they could continue the asylum process under the care of relatives in Massachusetts, she felt like she was being given a new lease on life.
 
“I don’t know how to express the happiness I felt,” she said. “Knowing that we would be happy, at ease, and safe…I don’t know if you could understand it.”
 
By May 2020, being allowed to enter the U.S. as an asylum seeker was akin to a miracle. 
 
The Coronavirus pandemic was raging in the U.S., and hearings for cases like hers had been indefinitely postponed, stranding thousands of asylum seekers in cities across Mexico with no idea when immigration courts would start hearing their claims again. In March, the Centers for Disease Control had caved under pressure from the Trump administration and issued a dubious public health order that allowed border officials to eject asylum seekers from the country almost instantaneously. By late Spring, America’s asylum system had essentially ceased to exist.

Paul Ratje

But in Massachusetts, Flor’s family’s plea for help had reached the ACLU of Massachusetts. They were desperate – the stories she told them about the situation in the camp were increasingly dire, and they feared for her life and that of her young daughter. ACLU attorneys in the state and nationally had already brought litigation against the MPP, and they decided to take her case along with a coalition of other advocates.
 
Flor joined two other women — one of whom also had a five-year-old child — as plaintiffs in the case, which argued that putting them in the MPP was illegal and inhumane. In the following weeks, attorneys for the ACLU in Massachusetts interviewed Flor and the other two women via cell phone. Flor would charge hers ahead of time in a communal charging station at the camp.
 
“It was only after talking to them on the phone for a really long time, sometimes ten hours, that they felt comfortable enough to share some of the things that they had been through,” said Adriana Lafaille, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Massachusetts.
 
Flor is from Guatemala and is Maya K’iche’ — a member of an Indigenous group from the country’s remote highlands. Throughout Guatemalan history, Maya K’iche’ and other Indigenous groups have been the target of discrimination and violence at the hands of politically dominant Spanish-descended Guatemalans, sometimes called “Ladinos.”
 
In recent years, that violence has surged, with conflicts erupting between Mayan communities and prospectors with their eye on valuable mineral deposits beneath Indigenous land.
 
Flor’s father was a vocal advocate for Indigenous rights, and she says she suffered as a result. After he was attacked and incapacitated, she began working as a maid in a Ladino household at the age of 10. She suffered repeated abuse at the hands of her employers, and, at 19, was violently attacked by a group of men who demanded information about her uncles.
 
By mid-2019, she knew it was time to leave.
 
“I realized that my daughter and I would never be able to escape persecution in Guatemala, and we fled,” she recounted in an affidavit.
 
But by the time the COVID-19 crisis erupted, Flor had been in the Matamoros refugee camp for nearly eight months. Her daughter was losing weight, saying she was too sad to eat, and Flor feared the men who’d assaulted her might return.

Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.

In May, Flor received a phone call from her attorneys. A federal judge had ruled in her favor, granting the ACLU’s request for her to be taken out of the MPP. She and her daughter would be joining a small handful of people who’d escaped the policy.
 
Flor’s attorneys feared she might be sent to an immigration detention facility instead of being released to her family in Massachusetts. But after only a single night in detention, she and the others were released.

For Lafaille, it was a hard-fought win in an era where the courts have often thwarted efforts to block the Trump administration’s harsh immigration policies.
 
“We were all just so relieved,” she said. “For our clients, it was an end to this incredibly difficult ordeal and a long period of such hardship and uncertainty.”
 
Flor and her daughter settled into life in Massachusetts. The pandemic was still raging, so mostly they stayed inside, but occasionally she accompanied her aunt to the park or grocery store.
 
“It’s so peaceful here,” she said. “I feel a tranquility that I have never experienced in my life. I’m treated nicely by people.”
 
But it quickly became apparent that lawyers from the Department of Homeland Security were not going to accept the loss and move on. Not long after Flor and the others arrived in Massachusetts, Lafaille received notice that the government planned to appeal the decision.

By mid-summer, COVID-19 had arrived in shelters across the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as in the refugee camp where Flor spent nearly a year. Despite the rise in cases in Mexico, DHS refused to relent — the agency pressed on with the appeal, seeking the power to send Flor, her daughter, and the others back to Mexico immediately.
 
Lafaille says that the appeal is a symbol of just how hostile the federal government has become towards asylum seekers under the Trump administration.
 
“Not only has the government claimed that our clients weren’t facing urgent harms in Mexico,” she said. “But after our clients were here in Massachusetts, DHS also asserted that the appeal had to be expedited because it was the government that was being harmed by having to allow these three women and two children — who they never contended were dangerous in any way — to live in safety with their families.”
 
Because of DHS’s appeal, Flor isn’t just facing the daunting task of presenting an asylum claim in immigration court — she’s fighting to prevent her and her daughter from being forced to do so from a tent inside a refugee camp during a pandemic.
 
Flor says she has to find ways to distract herself from the prospect.
 
“I tell myself that I shouldn’t think about that,” she said. “When I do, I try to think about other things instead.”
 
The ACLU of Massachusetts argued against DHS’s appeal in front of the First Circuit Court of Appeals on Oct. 6. Even in an era where the federal government is using every avenue it can to prevent asylum seekers from entering the country, she says the appeal stands out.
 
“It just shows a government that is totally devoid of humanity,” said Lafaille. “In the government’s eyes, the MPP is working because it is so devastating to asylum seekers that many simply cannot make it to their hearings, and their claims are deemed abandoned. They want the process to be so hard and dangerous in Mexico that people just give up.”

Until the First Circuit rules on the appeal, Flor and the other new arrivals are stuck in limbo, hoping they’ll be allowed to remain safe and out of harm’s way.

“The thing I wish for the most, what I ask God for, is to not be sent back to Mexico,” she said.

The ACLU of Massachusetts is co-counseling this case with the firm Fish & Richardson. Flor has been represented in her immigration case by the Law Office of Jodi Goodwin in Harlingen, Texas, and is now represented by Greater Boston Legal Services and the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic. In the First Circuit, the plaintiffs’ position was supported by National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council 119, represented by Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP; former government officials including Janet Napolitano, Roberta Jacobson and James Clapper, represented by WilmerHale; and a coalition of legal service providers and organizations, represented by the Law Office of Joshua M. Daniels.

Ashoka Mukpo, Staff Reporter, ACLU

Over the last months on our podcast, At Liberty, we’ve explored different conversations on the subject of policing: abolition, violence and accountability, protest, and activism. This week, we dug into a topic that has gained more attention in the wake of Daniel Prude’s death in March at the hands of the Rochester Police Department: the startling connection between mental health-related 911 calls and police brutality.

Studies show that nearly 50 percent of victims of police brutality are living with a disability, predominantly a mental health disability. In many ways, 911 has become the only option for people looking for mental health crisis intervention. And police often arrive at the scene armed with deadly weapons and a lack of mental health training, with devastating results.

But there is hope. There are alternatives to policing that can provide real care for people in mental health crises, if we invest in them. Joining us on this episode to break down the issue is Gregg Bloche, a professor of law at Georgetown University and a mental health care policy expert, and Ellie Virrueta, an organizer with Youth Justice Coalition.

Why Are Police the Wrong Response to Mental Health Crises?

Why Are Police the Wrong Response to Mental Health Crises?

Over the last months, we’ve explored different conversations on the subject of policing: abolition, violence and accountability, protest and activism. Today, we’re exploring a topic that has gained more attention in the wake of Daniel Prude’s deat...

Over the last months, we’ve explored different conversations on the subject of policing: abolition, violence and accountability, protest and activism. Today, we’re exploring a topic that has gained more attention in the wake of Daniel Prude’s deat...

Listen to this episode

I am a first-generation immigrant. My parents were both born in Colombia, and while I was born in the United States, I was raised surrounded by our culture. As a first-generation immigrant of Colombian descent, I grew up feeling as if I have a foot here and a foot there, or in other words, I am not from here nor from there. Walking through this world, I have always been asked the weighted question of, “Where are you really from?” or “Where are you from originally?”
 
As a Florida native, my response has always been, “I am from Florida, born and raised,” but that does not not satisfy the anticipated response of most folks who ask me that question. I am Colombian, I am also American and I am proud. Growing up with these dual identities has taught me so much. I will always be grateful, and honor my ancestors that paved the way for me.

This is why I have chosen to honor Black and Brown femme revolutionaries that fought for my constitutional right to vote. As young Latinx people, we should exercise that right in honor of those who cannot. There are many people that never get the chance to vote or wait their entire lives to cast a ballot.
 
I have a close friend that moved here at the age of three and finally at the age of 28, became a citizen. Unfortunately, my friend’s story is not unlike the reality of most immigrants in this country.Waiting years or even decades to become eligible to apply for citizenship - even if you have access to this avenue - is the tragic reality of our broken immigration system. There are millions of people with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or other various immigration statuses who don’t currently have a pathway to citizenship. While most of these people, who have spent a majority of their lives working and contributing their money through taxes, as well as their creativity and culture to this country, may never get the chance to exercise their voice in our democracy. The power of the polls is electing people to power who reflect our communities,  listen to our communities, and who are actively invested in creating change by adopting policy that uplifts historically oppressed Black and brown communities.

But the power to create change doesn’t stop at the polls. I have channelled my advocacy for my community with my gift of storytelling. Through my work, I have had the opportunity to support and work alongside amazing organizations that uplift the voices of Latinx folks, such as Miami Workers Center, Florida Immigrant Coalition, Poderosa Is Her Power, Office of New Americans Miami Dade and so many more.
 
On My Block and Get Away With Murder Actress, Jessica Garcia of Mexican and Cuban descent, shared, “We as Latinx (people) come in all different shades and backgrounds and it’s our responsibility to make sure we don’t continue to divide ourselves. We’re stronger together but it’s going to take a lot of uncomfortable conversations to get there.” Through involvement in local organizations and programs, Latinx folks can find community, a safe space to be themselves and share the love of their cultures.
 
It is within these spaces that I have been able to engage in conversations with my community that celebrates our cultural differences, and creates a spirit of solidarity to pursue change that will make better lives for us all. It starts with us. Not politicians.

In support of this work and in celebration of Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month, here are three things you can do.

1. Vote
   Encourage three friends to vote and make a plan for the upcoming election. Will you vote by mail, vote early, or vote on Election Day? The choice is yours, but make sure to make one!
2. Take the Census
   Ensure you count and are represented. Completing the census is a way to make sure your community is represented and funded. Also, keep in mind that there isn’t a citizenship question on the Census and it will not be shared with ICE
3. Volunteer or Invest in local Latinx organizations
   Find your community. Most of us have either lived the immigrant experience or know someone who has. Volunteering, investing and creating your own support circle is important.

Commemorating our Hispanic/Latinx heritage is more than a monthly observance. It is a call to action to embrace and improve the lives of those in your community.

Monica Mahecha (she/ella) is queer latinx, pisces that has over 30 lovely plant darlings in her life. She works as a digital strategist and fights to uplift voices of Black and brown folx. She is also a soccer fan, player, trainer and founder of a women's league; created to provide a competitive and safe space to play. You can keep up with Monica on Instagram: @livinNexplorin