Tag: immigration

An ex-CNN reporter turned independent journalist, Nick Valencia traveled from Atlanta to Minneapolis to report on immigration enforcement. But the tactics he saw federal agents use on protesters and press alike greatly disturbed him.

I am the first and only journalist who has been arrested and deported under the Trump administration. But, possibly, I will not be the last. And that worries me. I am still working as a journalist. My plan is to continue reporting on news from around the world. I have already done two international stories. I am a journalist, and I cannot keep quiet.

When I arrived at Atlanta-based immigration lawyer Charles H. Kuck's office early on a Monday morning, he opened a spreadsheet on his computer to show me his schedule for the day. His workday started at 7 a.m., spanned more than 10 hours, and included consultations with 18 clients. “A typical day,” he told me. Each case revealed something about the complications and convoluted rules and regulations inherent in our bewildering immigration system.

As the daughter of immigrants, I live between two worlds. One is shaped by my clumsy Vietnamese tongue, my mother’s pho, and the aching trauma and grief borne by a country I have never visited. The other is foreign to my parents: My rapid English passes by their ears, and my attitude toward failure is a privilege they never dared possess.

I grew up steeped in Atlanta’s civil rights movement. I remember singing “We Shall Overcome” at the King Center before I could fully speak English. The activism Atlanta instilled in me since childhood sparked a blaze when I began transitioning into adulthood, and the system began transitioning me into a state of “illegality.”

On any given day, Serene Hawasli Kashlan is responding to the legal needs of some 88 clients. They represent more than 36 different countries, she says, but they all share a common goal, to make the United States their permanent home. As managing asylum attorney at the Georgia Asylum and Immigration Network (GAIN), she’s among a relatively small group of metro Atlanta professionals providing a service that’s in high demand: pro bono representation for those who are seeking asylum.

The Emory Farmworker Project exists to give medical care to approximately 2,500 itinerant farmworkers a year in South Georgia, who tend the fruits and vegetables we eat. Many of the workers are immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, or Haiti. Every June and October, Emory students, faculty, clinicians, interpreters, and volunteers (about 350 total in the summer and 120 in the fall) travel to the area, setting up and taking down entire clinics twice a day as they move from farm to farm.

In October 2011, activists founded an underground school in response to policies that made it harder for undocumented students to go to college in Georgia. That stopgap—and those policies—have now been in place for a decade.

Daniela Rodriguez organized the Savannah Undocumented Youth Alliance has twice been named one of the 50 Most Influential Latinos in Georgia. Helen Kim Ho founded the Southeast’s first Asian American civil rights nonprofit, now known as Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Atlanta.

"The lasting memory I’ll have of him is how much he made me and my community feel seen and known, especially during a time when we were the most in need of help," writes Asian Americans Advancing Justice—Atlanta founder Helen Kim Ho.