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Dear friends,

We are excited to announce that next Monday, October 5th, we will be kicking off our 2020 Annual Crowdfunding Campaign! The first 48 hours is the most important for any campaign and we need your support to help us to keep up the fight for immigrant rights!

This year, in the face of monumental challenges, our dedicated SFDP team helped many hundreds of undocumented immigrants to secure legal immigration status in the United States. Legal immigration status brings with it potentially life-saving protection from detention and deportation, as well as life-transforming benefits such as work authorization. The work of Santa Fe Dreamers Project helps keep families together and empowers our clients to realize their dreams.

Many current and former SFDP clients are essential workers who are out on the frontlines helping our communities in innumerable ways to respond to the difficult challenges of the day. At SFDP we continue our work, compelled by our belief and knowledge that immigrants make us stronger.

In the time of Trump and COVID-19, the dangers faced by the undocumented immigrant community has never been higher. That's why we are asking that you please continue in your support of our work providing top-quality immigration legal services at no cost to the clients.

We know times are hard, and we could never ask anyone to give beyond their means, but please give what you can, and help spread the word by sharing our campaign with your networks. Be on the lookout for more announcements via email, FaceBook, Instagram, and the SFDP website. Thank you for your support!

"I obtained my DACA back in 2013, and because of that I was able to become the first person in my family to graduate from high school and go to college. I obtained my certification as a nursing assistant and as a phlebotomist at Santa Fe Community College. We fast forward to the present, I've been working with Christus St.Vincent Hospital for about two and a half years now, and I love it. I do plan on continuing my education and getting my BSN in nursing. Because of COVID-19, I know a lot of our community has been temporarily laid off, but in my case I was really blessed to be able to continue working. I was the only one in my family who was still getting an income, and my family didn't have to worry about rent or bills being paid because of me. I do feel like I play a major, important role during this pandemic."

- Mariel Pacheco, SFDP client & volunteer since 2015

Santa Fe Dreamers Project is HIRING!

SFDP is currently seeking to hire the first of two co-executive directors, with the second co-director to be hired at a later date when funding allows. The executive directors will share overall strategic and operational responsibility for Santa Fe Dreamers Project’s staff, programs, expansion, and execution of its mission.

For the full position description, go to www.santafedreamersproject.org/employment. To apply, send your resume and cover letter to [email protected]. This position will remain open until the position is filled.

Report from the Field

For the past year, SAFE PLACE pro se asylum clinic staff and volunteers raced against the clock to ensure that each of our 50-60 families submitted their applications for asylum within the required one year of entering the United States. Beginning in March, the COVID-19 crisis forced us to suspend our biweekly clinics and prepare asylum applications remotely. At the same time, the economic side-effect of statewide shutdowns deeply impacted the safety and stability of SAFE PLACE families, with many losing income entirely, and along with that, their ability to pay rent. Our SAFE PLACE families were thrown into further jeopardy when in June, DHS announced changes to the rules regarding access to legal employment authorization.

In effect, the new rules meant that after August 25th, virtually all SAFE PLACE asylum seekers would lose the opportunity to apply for legal work authorization.

As the El Paso Immigration Court continued to push hearing dates into 2021, it became even more critical for our SAFE PLACE clients to be able to legally work to support their families during the long asylum process. In July and August, the Safe Place team, with much needed help from other Santa Fe Dreamers Project staff, began an expedited process to prepare forms, collect client signatures and mail out over 50 work authorization applications before the deadline. This feat was only made more complicated by our commitment to abide by and exceed public health safety measures. Thanks to the many precautions taken at our drive-in clinics, eligible SAFE PLACE families were able to meet the August 25th deadline for submitting their work authorization applications with everyone involved remaining safe and healthy.

- Lynne Canning, Esq. & Nicholas Valenzuela

Disturbing News from Detention

If you are following the news, you have likely seen the story of whistleblower Dawn Wooten exposing mass hysterectomies and gross medical neglect in the Ocilla, Georgia detention facility. NPR reports that “Wooten said...that one particular gynecologist, whom she called ‘the uterus collector,’ performs the procedure. ‘Everybody he sees, he's taking all their uteruses out or he's taken their tubes out.’" After, the women would be left confused and struggling to come to terms with the fact that they would be returned to their countries of origin unable to bear children. More shocking still, this doctor is not a licensed OBGYN.This report is sickening, and it is also one more reaffirmation that ICE does not have the capacity, ability, or will to protect the lives of immigrants.

While this is very much a story about a bad actor, to stop there is
to ignore a pattern of abuse occurring in these facilities every day. Vox reports, “more than 1,200 sexual abuse complaints from adult detainees between 2010 and 2017 and more than 4,500 such complaints from unaccompanied children between 2014 and 2018.” Moreover, these are just the cases that are reported.

Recent Policy Changes

USCIS Fee Increases: On October 2, 2020, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will implement a wide range of fee changes (predominantly increases) and policy changes for certain nonimmigrant and immigrant petitions. The fee changes will impact all types of immigration cases, from family-based to employment-based and U.S. citizenship. There are presently at least two lawsuits pending to prevent the government from implementing these increases.
"the Wolf Memorandum": In direct contradiction to the Supreme Court's decision in Department of Homeland Security et al. v. Regents of the University of California et al., which overturned the Trump administration's termination of DACA, DHS Acting Secretary Chad Wolf issued a memorandum on July 28, 2020 further limiting the scope of DACA. At this time, USCIS is not accepting first-time DACA requests. For approvable DACA renewal requests, USCIS has limited work authorization cards to one year instead of the standard two years.
Cancelled USCIS Furlough: Last month, USCIS called off plans to furlough roughly two-thirds of its 20,000 employees. However, the agency’s deputy director for policy, Joseph Edlow, warned that averting the furlough would come at a severe operational cost that would increase backlogs and wait times across the board. Already, citizenship delays may keep hundreds of thousands of immigrants from voting in the November general election.

Unsettled: Every refugee and asylum seeker has a story to tell

Interested in attending a screening? See below for details.

STAFF UPDATES

Meet Mike! Santa Fe Dreamers Project is thrilled to announce our new interim Executive Director, Michael Andres Santillanes! Michael joined Santa Fe Dreamers Project as the Development Director in 2016, and took on the role of Interim Executive Director in July 2020. Michael is a native New Mexican, but also spent much of his later childhood in Anchorage, Alaska. Michael has worked in education and non-profit administration for organizations serving marginalized populations in New Mexico since 2007. Michael currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico and will serve as our interim Executive Director while we begin the search for permanent leadership at our organization.

Welcome to our 2020-21 Jesuit Volunteer Mary Vickers! Mary graduated from Rollins College in Orlando, Florida this past May with a degree in International Relations and Spanish. While at Rollins, she spent two years working on an activist anthropology research project investigating the impacts of anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric on Latinx immigrants in her community. As a legal assistant at SFDP, Mary has already hit the ground running, assisting with DACA renewals and naturalization applications.

Congratulations to our newest Department of Justice Accredited Representative Sarah Pezold! Sarah is based in Albuquerque and has been working with SFDP since August, 2018. As an accredited representative, Sarah will oversee the Albuquerque DACA clinic and Valencia County programming in addition to her continued work on the Valencia County DV Task Force.

Consider a Movie Night

Santa Fe Faith Network for Immigrant Justice invites you to a benefit documentary screening of Unsettled. Register through Eventbrite. Watch the film between October 1-14, then join a Zoom discussion with filmmaker Tom Shepard on October 15 at 7:00pm. Donations through Eventbrite will go to commissary funds for incarcerated LGBTQ+ asylum seekers. Those who register will receive a link to the film and the discussion. Flyer
At the peak of the 2018 migrant caravan, there were roughly 7,200 people attempting to walk thousands of miles to the American border. Among those making the journey was a small group of trans women. These women, strangers at the outset, formed a community along the way to keep each other safe. The Right Girls is a film that tells the story of three such women. Watch trailer.
A low-key blend of romance and immigration drama, “Lingua Franca” follows Olivia (Isabel Sandoval, who also wrote and directed), an undocumented Filipino transgender woman living in Brighton Beach. Read full NY Times review here.

This week a decision about the murder of Breonna Taylor was released. No charges were formalized related to her murder. It is easy to get discouraged and “opt-out", but now more than ever we need to turn toward the discomfort and continue to forge forward. Moreover, we have to hold space and fight for those who cannot simply turn away from the violence facing BIPOC. As protests break out across the nation, we will hear Martin Luther King Jr.’s quotes used in a vacuum, sterilized and made more palatable. Martin Luther King Jr once said “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Here, King is paraphrasing abolitionist Theodore Parker who originally stated, "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one." This is to say that like so many we watch in wait for justice to return and for that long arc to bend, but we also must keep working to bend it. Justice is not a given. The future we want to see is worth fighting for, and it is quite literally life and death for many.

Jesmyn Ward in her beautiful essay On Witness and Respair: A Personal Tragedy Followed by Pandemic, writes “I cried in wonder each time I saw protest around the world because I recognized the people. I recognized the way they zip their hoodies, the way they raised their fists, the way they walked, the way they shouted. I recognized their action for what it was: witness. Even now, each day, they witness.”

Say her name.

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