My name is Cynthia. It's the third of April and I'm here with Jonathan at
the Arizona Education offices in Phoenix. Jonathan, could you please state
your name and give me formal consent for this oral history to be recorded
and used for the undocumented voices project. My name is Jonathan and I
give consent. All right. Thank you very much. Welcome, Jonathan. Great to
have you with me to start off. I would like to ask you a bit more about
your personal background. So, for example, where were you born? So I was
born in the US and I was born in a, in a small town in Maryland on the
border with Virginia uh uh in a really small farming town. How was your
experience growing up there? Um It's an interesting place and it's in the
middle of a swamp. Um It's uh traditionally,
it's very segregated, it's half black and half white. Um It's
traditionally plantation country. It's where Harriet Tubman is from and
it's where Frederick Douglass is from. So, a lot of the civil rights
history of the US happened really close to there and there's still a lot
of racism and they're still not very used to people who are not either
white or black. Um So yeah, when I was a kid, people were still called
Chinese usually if they were anything other than white or black. So um
could you tell me a bit more about your family? Yeah. Um my family is from
different places and, and mixed. Um My older brother and sister were born
in Mexico City. Um and um my mother and their father is different. Um My
mother's side of the family is Italian and Mexican. And uh my dad's side
of the family, my, my father was, is from Virginia. So he grew up in the
segregated south in the US. Um And in Japan, which is an interesting
outlier. So my father grew up speaking Japanese and then came back. Um And
then on my mother's side, she moved from Mexico to where I grew up. Um
Are yourself undocumented? I'm not undocumented. I am documented. All
right. Um So could you tell me a bit more about your experience of being a
high school student? Uh huh. Um My, so I went to elementary school and
middle school in the US. And then when I was a young high school, I went
back to Mexico. Um So I did as a middle schooler, I got involved in doing
some activism that was around uh queer use of color in my school. And also
realizing a lot of the racial disparity that was happening in my town and
trying to figure out what to do about it. But then, um by the time I was
14, I spent a little time back in Mexico City. And then at 16, I moved
back and finished my education in Mexico City. So I lived in the south of
Mexico City and went to a school, a school there. Right. How was that
experience for you? Um It was good. It was disconcert, I'd always identify.
I'd always thought that I had a homeland to go back to and then I went to
Mexico and found that I, that wasn't a homeland either. So it was a
disconcerting experience for me as a, as a young person, right? I didn't,
um
I didn't fit in either in either place necessarily. And so I felt there
was, uh I had a process of realizing who I was, you know, and how to claim
myself. Um But it was beautiful. I love Mexico City. Um It was a, it was a
good place to be, it was good to be back with my family there. It was good.
I learned how to be a lot of things that I think that I had really
blocked in this country. I, I think I learned how to express myself in a
lot of ways. Could you elaborate a little more of that? Um Like one thing
is that I didn't, I didn't know how I realized that I didn't know how to
make people laugh until I went, until I was living in Mexico until I was
living my life in Spanish. Um, and
I was all of a sudden able to be funny and I was able to let myself loose
and I felt easier, which was an interesting thing for me. There was, I
think a lot of childhood in a little town with racial tension and lots of
Baptists can be very
confined and uptight. Um So, yeah, learning how, learning the different
ways of navigating communication and talking to people. Um
Did you, did you pursue higher education? I went to, I started at the, the
FAA de Socio lo the Sociology Faculty in the U A, the National Autonomous
University of Mexico and also uh studying Sociology at the E A which is
the National School of Anthropology and History. Um And I didn't finish
but I, I did courses of both of those.
Um At what point in your life did you
become aware of the issues around being undocumented?
It's hard to say the first point. I think the first time I really was
clear to me what was happening. I remember when I was probably
13 or 14
standing outside of uh of one of the detention centers where they help
people when they picked them up. It was a rural area. So there was lots of
migrant farm workers and then construction workers. Um And at a certain
point, we realized that lots of our, the families in our community were
being, having individuals picked up uh and deported or detained. And so I
guess the first clear memory I have of that is standing outside of a
center because we were trying to find one of my friend's fathers. Um It
was this big, it was a big gray building. Um Its enormous, it was like a
palace except that it was just all ST all cinder block and there was what
pipe sticking out of the wall and it had a flared end and that was all the
communication. There was no human, like there was no window, there was no
nothing you couldn't go in the door. Um So I remember speaking into this
pipe and then hearing this voice out of it and just trying to figure out
where, where he was and what was happening to him and how we could get him
out. Um And we didn't know we didn't have any of the, any strategies to do
this. At that point. We, we were just figuring it out step by step. How
old were you at that time? I was, I think I was about 13, um 13 or 14. I
was uh like a older middle school student or a young high school student.
Um Yeah. How did that evolve uh for you to, to um to become an activist.
How did you decide that you wanted to um you know, support those people.
Um
So at that time, that wasn't in my head, I identify activism for me or
like political stuff was around,
mostly around LGBT issues. Um Because I think that's what I was hearing. A
lot of negativity about people were very uh openly homophobic where I grew
up. Um And issues of documentation
um
were the things that we dealt with around the dinner table. They were the
things that we stayed up late and friends came over and we figure out out
how we were going to raise the money to get a bond, um who was gonna be
able to turn it in, who could fill out the papers and show up at the court.
Um
So
I think, um
gosh, I mean, that was, that's just, it's, it's like part of my family is
what it see. And then my, my, yeah. And then my parents come out though.
The history of my folks is a little, I think informs it also. My father
was involved in um sort of the civil rights movement in Virginia at his
time. And my mother comes out of a movement called the, it was a movement
of colonos, a movement of um like uh community members outside of Mexico
City where, where people from the co countryside and also people, poor,
people from the city took over land together um and built collective
communities. And so both of them came out really strong backgrounds where
they identified economic and racial injustice and what it looked like. And
then the way that people that we resolved, it was that every Sunday in my
mother's kitchen is where the ladies from, her community came and left
their, the money so that they could buy new land or buy um plum buy
plumbing, for example, for the the community kitchen. So solutions were
always, were always community. There was always like we come together and
we build stuff, we make things um so that we can live and, and we
understand that we are an independent people. Um
So
it's hard to say exactly like where the click was. But um
but yeah, I mean, I think that, that this, that background, that history,
the intense racial climate, the fact that my family was immersed in the
immigrant community and dealing every day with issues of detention and
documentation, all of these things. Um
That wasn't a, it wasn't a choice. It's just this is what we do, we, we
build things so that our people can survive. Definitely. Um You, you
already touched upon it uh that the climate back then was extremely
homophobic. So how was that growing up?
Um in that, in that time, that place sometimes. Yeah, it was interesting.
Sometimes I'm 26 and sometimes even with my people who are the same age
who have grown up in cities in the US or in Mexico, I feel like I am like
a decade older or more because I grew up in a really small town. Um
uh Like I remember going to school and there would be prayer circles
around flagpole or prayer circles outside of the entrance and people would
throw lots of things in the hallways. And um there was lots of like
physical attacks and um lots of times that there's only probably less than
10 students in a county school of about 1000 500 who are openly identified
as uh as, as gay or lesbian or bisexual at that time. Um So, yeah, there
was a lot of internalized hatred I think is the longest, the longest
lasting impact of that taken me a long time to learn how to
be um how to love myself and how to be really comfortable with myself and
how not to see myself through the eyes of um the people that, that I grew
up around. When was the 1st, 1st time that you actively uh became an
activist or were involved in an organization? And did your identity as
LGBT and your experience with undocumented immediately cross or intersect
or did that come later?
It came later. My first um
I remember going to meetings of the NN A AC P, the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People from before I could talk. Um So my
parents were engaged in my, my folk, neither of my parents are black, but
there was a strong, powerful um um structure of, of black community. Um
And that's where we, those were my parents friends and those were the
people, that's how, that's how we clicked in because it didn't, there was
nowhere else for us to find a home in the south. And these were people who
were community oriented, they understood what colonialism was and racism
was and, and we could be together and talk together. And so that's the
kind of environment that I was raised in. So I was really young. Um The
first time I started one, I was about 12 and we started a um at that time
, we called it a Gay Straight Alliance, which now is really a really huge.
And at that time, it took us almost a year to start it because the school
wouldn't let it, wouldn't, the school banned it. And so we had to appeal
and appeal and appeal and appeal. Um And then eventually, uh eventually we
were able to start it. Um That was the first time I started an
organization.
How was that experience? Like, what, what did you do? Um
Well,
we gathered a bunch of folks together. Um We, we had, we had different
kinds of meetings. We had some meetings where we talked about our
experiences, we had meetings where we did like uh cir kind of healing
circles. We had meetings where we talked about um politics. Um
There was, we, we had also, we worked on like there was some other things
happening at that time, there was like a couple of different wars that the
US was engaging in and there was like, racism, really strong racism in our
community and most of us were youth of color or of different backgrounds.
Um And so we also engaged in things like that. Like we did, like, we've
made like thousands of paper cranes and then filled our school with them
sort of that kind of thing for like, uh like art protests. We did um We
spent one night uh painting like probably miles of rainbow. Um
They used to sell these big rolls of newsprint of rainbow newsprint. Um
And then we, like, taped it to all of the walls of the school um for the
next day. So a lot of stuff to just be like, at that time, the point was
to say we're here, like, because it wasn't, no one had said that before.
Um And so we just did a lot, I think a lot of that of saying we're here.
How did you evolve from that point to today to your activism today? What
happened in that time? Yeah. Um So that happened when I was like a middle
schooler and then I was in Mexico City. Um And that plugged me back into,
I think a lot of my mother's history as um working in peasant and working
class communities and like, organizing around economic injustice and like
, or, well, just organizing around people's lives. Um
And then when I finished, well, when I stopped going to college in Mexico
, I came back to the US and lived all over the place. Um I worked on farms
um and in, and in forests. I put in, in construction. Um and I worked in
California and Texas and Colorado and Alaska and Tennessee and North
Carolina and Virginia and Maryland and Arizona and South Dakota. And so
I've been like all over and then at some point, went back to Mexico. I
worked in Guerrero in Southern Guerrero for a while. Um And in Mexico City.
Um
And so at this time, I did, I did manual labor. Um and then I, and then
every so often we do short times like I worked as an interpreter at a
medical clinic for tomato pickers um in a place near where I grew up. Um I
went to Guerrero for a while and I worked with an organization that does
um
they work with um the national Organizations of Indigenous Peoples in
Guerrero. So they do a lot of like media outreach or legal representation.
Um And also connecting people with like the UN and connecting people with
the Internat, the American Court on Human Rights, um the Inter American
Court on Human Rights, the Yak Cer Yeah. Um
So an inner like back and forth between being a laborer and a field worker
and doing um being part of organizations um and feeling alienated in both
worlds. Um I love being, I'm from the country and I love being in the
country and in the wilderness or in, in farm country. But also recognizing
, um, that I was either I was in environments where I couldn't be queer, I
couldn't, I, I couldn't be um be Mexican or I couldn't be both of these
things or I could be, but I couldn't talk about them. Um And really
understanding how alienated I was and that this in a sense was like this
continuation of when I was a younger child in a really conservative area.
Um It's almost like some part of me was seeking that out and trying to
continue to prove myself and be successful in that environment, which I
was, I was pretty good in construction. Um But at some point realized that
it didn't matter like that was not the point being successful in that bad
environment was not gonna make me a happy person. Um And then on the other
end, being involved in these organizations,
which were lots of um like Nongovernmental, like NGO S and, and nonprofits
and feeling in those situations. Like there was a lot of policy work,
there was a lot of um reports to members and action alerts and media work
and interviews and updates and websites and tweeter twit uh whatever those
are called tweets and um and feeling like nothing was actually happening.
Like it was just this buzz of like little electronic signals somewhere
between satellites. Um, and so
when I came, I moved to Phoenix because my, I was working in Arizona in
the forest in the north and my sister moved here and so I moved here with
her because it had been a long time. Well, it hadn't been that long but it
had been too long. It had been like a couple of years since I lived with
her for a while. So I came here to be with her and her kids and her
husband. Um And um
found, yeah, I found like community that was working in really concrete
ways and it seemed like a really good place to be, to, to, to go to work,
to start working on these things in a, in a way that was
totally embracing of, of the community and of the things that I was and
also was doing very solid things was, was building stuff and which
organizations were you involved or are you still involved? So, my first
point was Puente Human Rights Movement. Um Back when 1070 was passed, my
sister and I came from Virginia because she worked for a union in Virginia.
And we came to support the organizing of the mobilization. And so back
then, Puente was still part of an organization here called Dona Tierra um
which is a little community organization. Um And so we slept on someone's
floor and we were here for several weeks, canvassing talking to, talking
to people knocking on doors, making posters. Um And then fast forward a
couple of years when we came back, we both started going to Puente again
and then through Puente um
where I was engaged with them for a while. Um And then met individuals
from quip from the queer undocumented immigrant project um and was invited
to be part of that space. And so I went there um and really found myself a
lot more identified and also it's a much more community structure. Um
Puente is a large community with a with it's run by staff and quip is, is
actually community run. Um And so there's a big difference in making
decisions with everybody, right? And making mistakes and doing things in a
not always very smooth way, you know, like learning how media works as you
go along. So those are my two points of getting involved and then from,
and then I migrated away from Puente for the sake of time and of these
other things were working really heavily on queer and trans migrant work.
And then since then, since migrating away from them have really seen the
full breadth of like what there is out there from the center for
neighborhood leadership to Lucia to really working with ad A um even bus
understanding that how big this community is. So, could you elaborate a
bit more about what the point of movement is about? Um So puente puente
movement um is born around the protests against 1070. Um And the
commitment of people working in those protests to really build a long, a
long term durable um organization to fight for migrant community. They
were initially part of Dona Tierra. Um They were like a maybe a chapter or
a subpart of Dona Tierra. And then at some point, it made sense for them
to be their own. Um So they sort of packed up and moved out and set up
their own. Um And they do a lot of their work is on a kind of community
legal clinic basis. So people come in with different kinds of cases,
typically deportation cases and then they push um to get people out of
detention and they do it through um a lot of media pressure and a lot of
public pressure on ice and then political pressure sometimes, but they
mostly do media in public. Um So, like the, the basis of their work are
deportation campaigns. Um And um it's run by, there's a staff of um like
five people um who run different parts of that. Um And it's also part of
some larger national networks like the um the uh and alon, the National
Day Laborer Organizing Network. Um And um
and then there's some sort of peripheral projects. They have a garden,
they have little thing. They, there's an art project, there's a youth
project, but the central piece of this is fighting deportations. And then
uh Arizona, the Arizona career undocumented uh immigrant project. What is
that about? What are the main goals of that organization? So it's been
dedicated to telling, telling the story of queer and trans migration. So,
and in a, in a lot of context, what this means is talking in immigrant
community, talking about what it is to be queer and trans. And then on the
other side, talking in queer and trans community or LGBT community about
what it is to be migrant. Um So a lot of the work has been storytelling.
It's been community forums, it's been media, it's been outreach, it's
been forums like informational forums. Um and they've been working since
like 2011. And so they really laid this groundwork of people understanding
that there is a community there um which is important and it's been a lot
of work I think that people have done. Um Could you give me an example of
some of the activities or? Um yeah, um campaigns. So last week, um yeah,
it was last week, there was a double coming out for him in um Chandler,
Chandler, Gilbert Community College or Gilbert Chandler Community College.
Um And the double coming out for him essentially is where members of the
group um talk and tell their story of double coming out. Um which is a
story of coming out of the closet as LGBT and also coming out of the
shadows as undocumented. Um And in this case, it was to um an audience
that didn't know much about either. Um It often it's an audience that's
either a migrant audience or it's an LGBT audience. Um But the double
coming out forums are kind of the, the bread and butter, I guess of, of
like a lot of quips work also um organizing events and two of those, I
think that are pretty distinctive are one called somoa media. We are a
family and one called drag for a dream. Um They're both fundraising, but
they're also both uh big events where people are brought together in a way
that they can talk about or experience um The, this dual identity. So,
SOMOS, familia is about sitting families down, sitting migrant families
down with LGBT Q community um and sharing a dinner and having, and, and
talking, having discussion and finding points in common, whether it's
popular music or border politics, whatever that is and then drag for a
dream is bringing people together around um uh a show, bringing people
together around, around entertainment. Um But, but really talking about
what, what um undocumented LGBT Q community looks like and really
celebrating the creations and energy of that community. How are these
events um received in the community? Not only in undocumented LGBT
community, but in the wider community. Do you feel that you are making a
difference? Um So, yeah, again, the work over the last several years has
really established that there is that this is a community that there is a
queer and trans undocumented community and that in and of itself, people
recognizing that that exists is important. Um Also Phoenix is the sixth
biggest city in the country. And if we go to Mesa or if we go to any one
of the gay bars on the weekend, we're gonna find 10 undocumented people or
undocumented queer and trans people who have never heard that there is a
movement. And so that means that we have a lot more work to do. Um So the
work has been vital, it's been essential. It's been some of the most
important work in the country. It's been one of the only chapters of, of
national equip. That's even, that's been even existing up to this point.
Um But there's a lot more work to do. Um How do you see that future
evolving? Um Well, I think that's why um so Arcuri is something that
started um actually kind of between puente and quip um with membership
from both um like just over a year ago and kind of what we were looking at
was that this amazing storytelling work had happened um and was happening
and people understood the community existed. And now our step, next step
was to really start building concrete solutions and responses. Um So my,
what I see is that people don't, we don't have as a community, lots of
volunteer time we don't, typically we're not able right to go spend days
volunteering to do this or that. And so we need to have concrete ways to
plug into work. Um And so people that the problems they have in front of
them are things like health and housing um deportations um or other
interactions with immigration enforcement um jobs. Those are the things
that queer and trans community, migrant community are, are fighting with,
right? That, that's what the fight looks like. That's what injustice is on
a daily basis. It's not having these things. Um And so the way we get
people involved is by building those things with community and reaching
out to community and engaging, asking what do you want, you know, I do,
you want to make that happen. Um And when people say yes, bringing them in
and making, you know, building a process that includes everyone who says
yes. So that's how our careers liberation team came into the picture. Yeah.
So it comes from both of these sides and it comes at an interesting time
, which was that 1062 was a law that was proposed that would not, that
would allow business owners to deny business or services to LGBT community
um that was proposed and it was on the desk of Governor Brewer um at the
same time that there was a hunger strike going on outside of the ice uh
Ice headquarters just a couple blocks away from here. At Palm Street in
central. Um There were about 30 people camped out for two weeks um on the
sidewalk. Um uh around five families who were all, they were all in hunger
strike. They were all that were not eating for those two weeks to demand
the freedom of one. A couple of them were Children that were in detention
, one of them was a husband. Um So different family members. Um And so
these two things were happening just a few blocks away. There were
protests against 1062 and there was this hunger strike. Um And they were
sort of happening in two different worlds. Um 1062 had the, the resistance
to 1062 had the support of all of the big LGBT organizations in the state.
It had national support. There was money behind it, there was media
behind it, there was immediately, there was a small business campaign
across the city and they had so much power, business, power uh and money
that they had, they were able to get Jan Brewer to throw it away off her
desk. Um Then a couple of blocks away, we have families who haven't seen
their Children for years and we're talking about a deportation epidemic
that's um
allowing people to be the victims of crimes in their community because
they're not willing or able to communicate with the police that's stealing
brothers and sisters and fathers uh and Children off the streets. Um and
that's touching all of our communities in this really, like, ravaging way
, this really concrete way. You know, it's, it's about losing your family
members. It's like a war. You know, it's, it's something that's much more
, much more guttural than not, not being able to buy ice cream, which is
terrible. Right. We, we can agree that, that, that sort of discrimination
is terrible. But, but weighing these two things together, it's interesting.
It was interesting to us and it was shocking and it was powerful to see
how much support there was um for ensuring equal business access to queer
and trans community. Um And how much support there was to versus the very
little support that there was for ensuring that our families would stay
together and our communities would stay together. Um And so we were, and
we were the only people crossing and in present in both of these things.
And so essentially Arcuri started like a couple like a week after that, a
week after the hunger strike finished, we sat down and we said we need to
find a space between these communities and we also need to find a way that
we can make these deportation campaigns focus on our community because all
of the organizations have really good intentions and they're not
homophobic, but they don't find queer and trans people because they're all
waiting for a family member to show up and as asylum seekers as, as people
who are often estranged from our family or in order to live our lives, we
have to move out and, and, and live separately. No one necessarily reports
that we're gone. Um So recognizing these different things and the need to
create a space where we found our people. What? Yeah. So those are the
real specific goals of our careers liberation team. So to, to find
concrete solutions, what do you think are the biggest struggles of that
community of that LGBT undocumented community facing deportation or are
being detained? So um
we deal with detention but then also when people get out of detention, um
what that looks like? And that's something that I remember from Puente is
that, that actually we talk like detention was the focus of the
organization. But the questions at every meeting were, what are we gonna
do to get job permits? Because now we're all out of detention and we're
here in this room and we can't work um or keep our Children alive. So what
is, what is survival look like? And so, and that essentially we deal with
the same thing. We fight detention, but then we also post detention. A lot
of our membership is coming out of detention, right? So in detention,
we're talking about rape and sexual abuse. We're talking about constant um
constant uh verbal and physical abuse from guards and from other people in
detention, denial of medication. We've had people die because they've been
denied A I Ds treatment. Um People get denied hormone treatment, trans
people. Um
And across the board are all put in the wrong gender facilities. Um
Despite the fact that there's a law that says that people need to be
housed with the gender of their identification, they're not ever. Um So
it's in detention, not to mention what that looks like if someone actually
gets deported to a place that they were fleeing from because of
potentially harmful conditions or hazardous conditions and then post
detention. Um Even somebody with the best asylum case ever, if they are
able to put that asylum case in before they get um out of detention, they
still have six months until they're allowed to ask for a work permit. And
then another two months until it comes through is like nine months, 8 to 9
months. So it's like almost a year before people are legally allowed,
legally allowed to work. Um And then once they are legally allowed to work
, then they're going up against trying to get a job as queer and trans
people in a state where you're legally allowed to not give people jobs
because of their sexual identity or gender identity. So jobs is the
biggest thing. Um
We've had people leave the state. Um And actually this is one of the
biggest reasons that we have to fight these fights is because if we don't
fight these fights, then we don't have anyone to fight anything because
everyone has to go to L A or New York where there's more resources and
more possibilities. Um Housing is another huge one. The biggest thing that
happens is people come out of detention and they go to back with their
families if they have a family, but then their family doesn't allow them
or isn't comfortable with them being queer or trans. And so then within a
couple of weeks, people are terribly depressed. Um they might be engaging
in like different kinds of risky behaviors that people do when they're
depressed. Um like substance abuse or different kinds of self medication.
Um They can't find jobs and they're having, we're having to work in
informal economy. And so even in the best of circumstances, right, that
means working without papers or selling cigarettes on the street corner,
both of which expose you to ice and police. The worst of circumstances.
We're talking about people having to do, like going to the being
trafficked or, or, or um um sex work or different things that are even
more risky, um which exposes people again to more, like more contact with
p with the police um and more um contact with immigration. Um And then
health is huge too. Um
Just getting the resources in a state like Arizona where it's both a
homophobic state and it's also a state where there's a complete ban on
undocumented people receiving uh state funded resources. So trying to find
things out like, where can somebody who is suicidal? Go to get, um, a
consultation with a psychologist? Um, that kind of stuff. It's really hard.
So,
I guess that's what jobs, housing help. But there's lots of things. What
are the concrete, for example, to, to first focus on people who are in
detention? What does our career liberation team try to do for those people
? So, we visit once every two weeks, we visit folks and it's often the
only visit that people get um for over the course of several months. Um
Sometimes it's the first visit they've gotten in a year of being detained.
Um And, um, and we write letters and those are both about moral support.
Um It's about letting people know that they have community um that they
are not crazy and they're not alone and that there is something to fight
for. Um, and someone else out there that's looking, looking after them. Um
So moral support is really key. Um We also when, when cases, um when it
seems like a possibility, we work on cases, we make them public and we'll
build campaigns to try to get people out. And so we've had a couple of
campaigns now um for two members to get them out of detention. Um And
those are both successful and we're in the middle of another campaign
right now. Um Where basically it's a question of sort of shaming ice um of
making it really clear in public um that ice is doing really terrible
things to people and at a certain point, Ice is willing to just let them
go so that they don't have to be um scrutinized in the way, in that way by
the public. Could you give an example of one of those campaigns? What your
tactics were and um what the actual result was, how it was conceived in
the community? Yeah. So, um I think the most successful one was Mari Chuy.
Um And we, she was a member in detention from starting last spring. So,
actually about a year ago, um and then in the, into the summer around June
, she called us and we learned that um she um suffered a sexual assault
that she was raped by her cell mate. Um And so we um reached out to
national partners um to different people um who work on either transgender
rights or legal representation or migrant community rights and legal
representation. Um and started, started a media campaign. Um So we first,
well, I should say before the media campaign, there's a, we, there were
several weeks of communicating with ice and saying, hey, this is going on
, what are you doing about it? Getting the response of uh nothing,
everything's OK. Um And then going up the ladder and communicating with
the next person. And so finally, when we reached ice at the national level
, um and got the no from them, we said, OK, well, then we're gonna, um, we
make it public. And so that campaign in particular, we had publicity, like
the first public sort of shock went from,
um, like it was in the Advocate, uh, was on most of the major, uh, news
stations like Fox and CNN. Um, it went to both coasts in terms of
newspaper coverage. Um, and that was really because of our co of our
contacts and other organizations. So that was because of um working
through this big network of support around the country. Um And then once
that happened, we were able to push an organizational sign on letter. Um
So we were able to get a letter that was signed on to by like 80
organizations around the country. Um And part of those organizations were
, were um some of the powerful gay rights organizations like uh human
rights campaign. Um And um um the task force, the gay and lesbian task
force. Glad some organizations that haven't traditionally stood up for
trans rights and also haven't traditionally had anything to do with um
social or racial, sorry, economic or racial justice. Um We were able to
get sign on to that. Um So at a certain point, the focus was that was, was
bringing pressure to bear from all of these powerful organizations. Um
And then, um from there, we focused on elected officials. Um Here in
Phoenix, we have Kirsten Cinema who's a member of the LGBT caucus, um
which is like supposed to represent LGBT rights in, um, uh, in the, in the
national legislature. Um So we were really focusing on trying to get her
support. Um, and that's kind of where we hit a wall because she refused.
Um, and, um, and then the nationally, the caucus, um said that the most
that they were willing to do was just ask how she was doing, but no one
was willing to say that, that she should be out. Um So when we saw that
even our LGBT legislators weren't interested in supporting, um we moved
back into the media and we kept going at it and in fall um
is that, that the pressure lessened on our part, it had been like four
months of like constant go, go, go, go, go. And we sort of said we need to
reassess. Um
And then it was in,
in December is when we found out that she was gonna be out. Um So
essentially, it was this year long process, there was this big push at the
beginning, a strong push through the middle and then essentially, we were
up against the wall and trying to reach for ideas and more energy. Um And
then after this time, kind of when it quieted down, I just let her go. Um
And recognized when they let her, when she was released, it was in the, in
the decision was they recognized the role of the um of the community of
the LGBT community in doing that. So that was kind of how that was. It's a
really long process, it doesn't happen immediately. Um Yeah, but, but it
works. Did you feel that you created more awareness in the public about
the issue? Yeah, I mean, I think Mighty Chuy's campaign is something that
at least in organizing, at least in migrant movement across the country.
Everyone knows about it and in and in queer and trans community, people
who are politically engaged. Um And it was the first big campaign, right?
That was really talking about um what it looks like to be trans in
detention in mi in immigration detention. Um
So yeah, I mean, it seems really important. Um how and then going back to
um after detention. So the three biggest problems you've mentioned were
work housing and health. How do you try to relegate those problems?
So we recognize that we're not gonna solve them by like giving people jobs
or giving people beds to sleep in because there's way more people than we
could ever find beds, for example. But what we have to do is create
community solutions or people who are experiencing, not having a job or
not having a place to sleep um are able to solve their own problem or at
least work on it and in doing so are gaining agency and voice. So they're
getting their, they're raising their own voice and learning how to tell
their own story in a powerful way and learning how to essentially how to
write their own path forward. Um So really pulling away from some of the
charitable models that we've seen, you know, where like people, like we
build a house and then uh we'll give room to everybody to sleep in. Um And
really focusing um like the jobs project. One of the things that we're
working on is a micro business. Um So one of the guys who came out of
detention last year is now running a small like pop up restaurant and he
starts it. He does the restaurant every month or two months and we invite
a bunch of people. He designs a fancy meal, we pres sell the tickets and
then um people come and join us for that evening. Uh And then out of that
, we're working on some other ways that people can um kind of have a tool
kit so that they can, if they say know how to do nails or know how to do
carpentry, they can take some pictures of the work they do, they can put
together an ad, we can push it out over social media. Um And they can, in
that way it's, it's not gonna totally solve their need, but it will,
having some money is better than having no money. Um
Health is another one where, where the, the way we're going about health
is um essentially just asking people what the gap what the health gaps
they experience are, what, what do they need? What are the, what are the
challenges that they've dealt with? Um And based on that, inviting them
into the conversation um to, to fix those things. Um So all of all of
these, we're always using a model where we ask people what's wrong and
then invite them to help us fix it. And we understand that not everyone,
we're not gonna get 100% of people. But if we only get 10% of people, all
we have to do is make sure to ask 10 people and we'll get one who wants to
commit. So if we ask 100 people, then we'll get a team of 10 and that's
really good because we can ask 100 people. So, um you mentioned that there
is a large network of these organizations not only locally, regionally and
nationally. Um First of all, how do uh for example, our careers and uh a
equip work together? And how would you situate these uh these
organizations in a larger undocumented youth movement? Um
So Arcuri and a work really closely together um
to the extent that um we don't have an official, like what do you call it
mou memorandum of understanding? So it actually sometimes it's confusing
for membership, which one is which, and which project is, which
organization? Um the definitive difference, right is I think resources is
that they do have their own separate bank accounts. So like that is that
they are clearly separate organizations because, um, we don't get funding
from quip to do the stuff that we do as aquis and vice versa. Um And so
we're working on that on figuring that out how, how it makes sense to work
together in a local way, um,
nationally. Um
It's, I think it's interesting to see what's happening now in Phoenix and
how it's connected to what has happened in other places like California,
um even like North Carolina, um New York. Um and the way that United we
dream initially was big in these places. And then at a certain point,
people began looking into more racial and economic justice focused
solutions. Um And in California, for example, they started developing some
really, like fairly radical organizations that, that really delved into
what justice means for our communities. Um And so then at different points
, right? There was UWD and then there was N A, the National Immigrant
Youth Association, um which was like the more radical alternative and a
lot of people joined into that from all over the place. Um And Arizona has
always been part of UWD and part of quip nationally, even though the quip
here was founded before um the National one. So it seemed like an
interesting point when the immigrant youth movement here in Arizona is now
starting to, to delve into potentially some more radical politics in the
sense when I and I use the word radical in the meaning because radical is
about roots. So finding the root of the problem and resolving it. Um so
less policy focused and more roots focused, more focused on. So if the
problem is economic injustice, how do we work on changing that? If the
problem is colonialism, how do we work on changing that? So I think it's
an interesting time. Um
And I think it means that Arizona right now is sort of between a lot of
national players who would really like to have a footprint here or who
would like to be, you know, who would like to show that they have a
project going on in Arizona because it's sort of this terrible and
exciting place. Um As far as um migrant organizing goes, there's a lot of
really hard, like harsh realities here. And so to be able to say you do
work in Arizona, I is a big thing and a lot of national organizations say
we want to do work, we, we do work there. Um So it's interesting to find
how we are located between all of these. We get a lot of support from
organizations like the transgender law center and organizations like the
um like Endon, like the National Day Laborers Organizing Network. Um
um because they want to support what's happening locally and they want to
support us doing something that makes sense to do here and we get a lot of
support from other local organizations like um um in New York, the queer
detainee empowerment project or in California from CIA um from the um the
Californian Immigrant Youth uh co uh Association Alliance. I don't know
what that is. Um And then, um and so there's a lot of these kinds of,
these kinds of alliances and then our relationship with some big up, some
of the, there's like quip and then familia are the two big national um
queer undocumented organizations. And her relationship with them is, is
always good because they do really great work on a national level. But
it's also interesting because they often
mm present that they're doing work here and yet they're not. So it's an
interesting interaction, you know about, about are they would just, what
does that look like? You know, or do we have to be part of them to support
each other or how, how does that play out? Do you see that future evolving
um that you, that the smaller local and national organizations will cooper
? I think we do co-operate. And so I think the future is that we'll just
learn how to do it better. And I think what Arizona seems to be a little
hard headed, which I think is something that's really good about its
organizing. It insists on doing things that are authentic and it makes
sense for the local climate which may not be the same things that make
sense in New York or Oregon. Um, and so I think the future is that Arizona
will continue to decide to do its own thing and do really good local
organizing here and we learn better and better and better how to work with
people nationally. Um That's what I think on a personal level. Um, how has
, well becoming, you've, you've already have a long history of, of being
an activist. But how do you feel that your involvement with, for example,
Arizona quip and our careers liberation team has influenced you personally.
Um Oh,
well, I think that it's um
I feel more identified with the people that I spend time with um
than I have ever really before. So I, I, in some ways, it feels like I've
found a community of people. Um It won't ever be my community because I'm
not from Arizona. Um And um and because my migration history is different
, I'm a citizen. Um But it's a community that I um again, kind of like I
said, when I first went back to Mexico, this is like on another level,
like I can breathe. Um I can, I feel easy here and, and with the people
that I'm working with. Um and it also is, it's a time and a place where
we're ready to move and so ready to do things. And so it seems like,
um I think I spent a lot of my life waiting to move and waiting to be
ready to do things. I grew up in, you know, the late nineties was the tech
bubble. It was when the US was just blowing up economically and people
were becoming millionaires every day and the internet was going full
throttle and it was supposed to be like the most abundant, wealthy country
in the world. And I lived in a place where people lived in half torn apart
trailers with, you know, with a tent next door. Um and um couldn't feed
their kids. And so, and so I've always had this feeling of like there's
all these terrible things happening, we need to change things and yet
there's this just heavy pressure of saying everything's OK, there's
nothing to change, don't worry about it. This is all we are. At the end of
history, we've already done it all. We have justice. Um So there's a lot
of relief being in a community of people where, where we're all on the
same page of understanding that there's a lot of ways to go. There's a lot
of, a lot of, a lot of path ahead of us and, and that we really need to
work on it. So in that sense, it's like really fulfilling to be part of
this and to be here. Um Yeah. Um a little bit more about the identity. So
how do you see the undocumented identity intersect with the LGGT identity
? Um
I think there's some interesting things on both sides. Um
through most of history, queer and trans people, especially in this
continent. We've had very much accepted roles in our societies. And often
we've been identified as having special roles. So we've been caretakers,
sometimes we've been warriors, sometimes we've been visionaries sometimes.
Um gosh, there was like one at least and I'm thinking of one group of
people who considered uh queer and trans people to be like the gatekeepers
to the underworld, you know, all sorts of things. Um There's always been
in, in, in the traditional cultures of this continent, at least the ones
that I have learned about. There's been this um a recognition that we have
um
a unique viewpoint and that because we're slightly outside of the circle
um of, of um nuclear families or of heteronormative culture, um We have a
slightly wider view or maybe it's a slightly narrow, narrow view, but we
can see things that other people can't see. And so I think that queer and
trans people always bring incisive um incisive vision and creative vision
to the work that we do. Um And this is why any of the movements that have
happened in this country for racial and economic justice, even if the top
leaders are not, if you go just below the surface, the people who wrote
the books and wrote the plans and designed the marches were queer and
trans people. Um So I think that's important to understand that there's an
, there's an because we have been outside, we are, we have had to become
visionary. We have to have, we have to make new stuff, you know, in a very
simple way. When people are resourceful, any person, if you put them
outside a box or outside of a house, they'll figure out how to live
outside of it. So we've been put outside of the box. Um And we have to
figure that out. So it means that we can create new solutions and that
makes us able to create new solutions and be visionary. Um I think having
and my experience and, and this is I can't speak as an undocumented person
, but I can speak as a person who I didn't grow up with an American dream.
Um I grew up with, I always think of it as the dream of Guam Milpas. And
Guam Pas is the community that my mother built in the pedal in the south
of Mexico City in the volcanic um the volcanic rock fields. And the old
ladies there said that there were still snakes crawling out of the caves
and there was still water in the low parts. Um
And today that's a community that while many other communities founded at
the same time who never organized, still don't have running water or paved
streets or plumbing or um trash collection. It's a community where
everyone owns their own home, the streets are paved, everything is plumbed.
People are very poor but they have their stuff and things work. Um
And so what I remember the, the central image that like the logo or the
emblem, I guess of the community where we had a poster on our wall. Um Was
there a circle and it was a mound of dirt and with a shovel sticking out
of one side and a pitch fork in the other. Um And then all of these
pictures around the edge and like that old sepia toed photograph um of
people building stuff together. Um And so that's always, that's the vision
that I grew up with. It's not a vision of
manifest destiny and westward expansion and cities on hills and shining
lights of, of um
Yeah, of, of knowledge. It's a vision of people standing together and
working together and understanding that we're on a continent that we've
been on for thousands of years and that none of this is new, but there are
lots of new problems and that we really have to be recovering from what
colonialism has brought to us and we have to be um building solutions
every day. And
so I think there's something essential about having roots outside of this
country that allow you to see through its story and see through its
mythology. Um
And then I think the question of being undocumented, I can just say in my
personal experience, having undocumented family and having undocumented
community um
is it is an even more acute experience and even more pointed experience of
um essentially just not having any reason to have faith in an American
system because you can't call the police and you are afraid to go to the
post office. Um So there's just an essential,
it's not a mistrust because that sounds like a bias. It's not a bias. It's
just that we don't, there are no assumptions. Um We don't assume that
things are OK. We investigate.
How do you feel about the tactic of the undocumented youth movement of
coming out undocumented and unafraid? Um
J
Here we go.
So this is the continued recording with Jonathan. So I was just asking you
about the um the tactic of coming out as undocumented and unafraid. So how
do you feel about that?
I think one of the most important things we can do is openly recognize um
openly recognize the things that people will use to undermine us and
openly recognize the ways that people say that we are made that people say
that we are less worthy or say that we are not um not as much. I think if
we claim these things um publicly and proudly, then we turn them from what
people call weaknesses into tools and into, into defenses and into um yeah
, into points of strength. I mean, yeah, so I think it's a powerful, so
you already mentioned some of the policies. So for example, on a state
level, restrictive policies like SB 1017 and proposition 300 have
implemented,
how do you feel about SB 1070? And of course, this policy has personally
affected you and that you, that it became a motivator for your activism.
Well, so my family here in Arizona, we're, we're as of very recently now,
we're all documented. Um But up until very recently, um the reality of not
calling police for anything. Um the reality of um
risking um family separation for like fairly small things is huge. Um And
I think that its psychological impact is huge in terms of people
being able and willing to step out and really use their voice in society.
And then proposition 300 in turn, provides that university students who
are not us citizens or permanent residents or do not have lawful
immigration status are not eligible for in state to tuition rates or any
financial aid that is funded by the state. And also on the federal level,
a Comprehensive Dream Act has not yet been able to pass in 2012. Pre
President Barack Obama passed the deferred action for childhood arrivals.
Complimented that with the deferred action for parental accountability.
What do you think about that policy? Do you feel that immigration reform
should be focused at the local, the state or the federal level?
I think that we have to take success where we can get it. I shouldn't, I
said that wrong. We have to demand success where we can get it and not
accept anything as a win. We have to, everything is a step toward um but
it's going to be a long time before we see something that actually does
what we needed to do. Uh Federal level immigration reform is terrifying in
the way that it promises long term criminalization for the community that
continues to cross the border. And for the way that it militarizes the
border and for the way that it uh promises persecution for um people
already in this country without documents and with criminal backgrounds,
um those things and, and, and the fact that those would now be tho those
categories, those um um things would be written into federal law is like
very worrying. So in that sense, a national package that we know that
they're gonna put all of these terrible things into. It's hard to know
what, what the balance is, what are those things really worth? Um um DACA
Al uh also um is clearly huge and important and has changed. Um
Our, like the life of my community has changed and has changed lives like
really significantly, it's also reversible, it's incomplete. It doesn't
give a pathway to the basic rights that any person ha already has. So it
doesn't recognize our human rights. Um So it's very much, not, not enough
, not the whole thing. Um
And the way that this country has traditionally worked is that instead of
solving problems, it just gives a little bit of a palliative, it gives
something to make you feel a little bit better. Um So I wonder, you know,
what, what we saw in the immigrant youth movement was that after DACA was
passed? A lot of people said, oh, it's over where it's OK and they pulled
out of the movement and the movement lost a lot of momentum. Um And then
also what does it look like now that people have DACA and can get
different kinds of jobs, they can't dedicate time to the movement. So it's
really changed the nature of the youth movement um in the way that people
engage and in the amount that they're able to engage. Um
So I don't know what I know, I guess is that in my personal focus is that
national policy seems always feels like it makes me balance, it makes me
give away too much to get whatever they're promising. And I know that at a
local level, things are,
we can't do it completely at a local level, but I do know that we can push
for policy that will be good. Um And we can know what that balance is a
little better. So I feel more comfortable in my work, pushing for local
policy like the one ID for Phoenix, the Municipal identification for
Phoenix City. Um
and that kind of thing um that I'm more comfortable with that than
national, but I recognize the importance of both how do you see it
evolving towards the future? Like you said, a lot of people pulled out
after DACA, how do you see that evolving?
It's hard to know. Um
the
um
on a policy side, like uh up to just based on results up to now, it seems
like no one is proposing even the minimum things that are necessary for
this to be a country that respects human rights and for this to be a
country that respects working rights. Um So it's hard to know because
there's no and, and, and this is where I think this, we can't look at
immigration by itself um because we live in a country where black people
have been citizens now for a very long time. Um So have native people, so
have lots of um Mexicans and Hispanic people um and poor white people and
none of their human rights are recognized and we're, and, and we're still
a country that pursues genocidal policies both within and outside of our
national borders. So it's like, how do we solve it for justice? I don't
know, it seems like the end result is going to be some kind of
Machiavellian
negotiation and compromise that puts a lot of really terrible things into
law and leaves a lot of work to do.
Have you been, like you said, you've seen the consequences in your
community? Could you, have you been involved with people who have been
personally affected by these policies, the good ones like DACA. Yeah, I
mean, uh, one of my best friends DACA is just coming through now because
he had some complications and it took him this, this many years to get it
since it was passed originally. And that changes everything, um,
in terms of the ability to get work, the ability to get work that's paid
what he deserves, um, his mobility, his ability to be here instead of
having having to follow the work around um on a lot of levels, even some
of Obama's administrative changes before DACA, in terms of being able to
request your permit on family basis or on um extreme hardship basis before
you had to leave the country instead of leaving the country requesting a
permit and then waiting 10 years um that change my family has been able to
, that's why we are documented as a family now is because we were my
family members were able to on the basis of extreme hardship for their
citizen family, ask for a permit, get it approved and then go back and
have their final interview instead of going back and waiting years and
years and years before they saw their kids again. So those things are real
and like, and that's why we can't deny them is because they, it, it
changed, you know, I mean, it changes things and they really do. So yeah,
so you see it as, as possibly um positively evolving and then in your
opinion. Keep pushing locally. Yeah. Well, again, I think that whatever
happens on a national level, there's gonna be these things that are
concessions. They're going to make life easier for some chunks of people.
And it's going to be important to recognize how life has changed for
those people. But they're going to, at the same time implement
big areas of law that are still continuing to do really bad things. Um,
Like right now with the DACA that was implemented, we see that the pri uh
the new enforcement priorities, uh the new pe that Obama put into, into
place that supposedly refocuses um deportation and detention on people who
are like high criminal priorities. Um This does things like giving ice a
reason to keep Nicole Hernandez Polanco in detention. They say that under
the new policy, she because she was deported once as a minor who is
seeking political asylum um is now a priority for detention despite having
no criminal record. So it is good because
my friends and family have documentation now and are able to work. It is
bad because um there was no intent to solve anything. It was just an
intent to give something so that people would stop complaining. Um It
would, it was an intention to, to give a little bit, give a concession so
that people would not push so hard. So we have to accept the victories
that we get and we have to keep pushing. Ok. Well, thank you so much for
this interview, Jonathan. Um Thank you for answering my questions.