For some people, immigration seems easy. It is planned … For many others, it is not easy, not planned, and most of the time sudden and uncertain. They barely have time to gather their documents and essential belongings. I know people who always carry their documents with them because they don’t know when or if they will go back home. They don’t even know if they won’t find their house burned down when they return.

At RCT, we mobilize to ensure that anyone experiencing language as a barrier to safety or dignity has access to free, professional, trauma-informed translation and interpretation services. It may not surprise you that a large volume of the cases we take on involve LGBTQ+ individuals whose identity has meant they have been targeted, mistreated, or abused in their countries of origin…

As asylum applications are subjected to increased scrutiny and over 60,000 people are currently detained by ICE, we are seeing a dramatic increase in immigration detention cases and deportation defense cases, which has reshaped the nature of our work. As the needs on the frontlines shift, our mission remains the same: ensuring that everyone navigating the carceral immigration system has access to language support.

In the United States, many immigrant women and underserved families face enormous barriers to healthcare access. For some, health insurance is financially out of reach. For others, language barriers create fear, confusion, or mistrust within medical systems. And, in reproductive healthcare settings, those barriers can become even more urgent and dangerous.

Working on multilingual community health projects is often described in terms of coordination, timelines, and deliverables. But the reality of this work is also emotional, relational, and deeply human.

For the recent Community Health Assessment project with Contra Costa County Public Health, my role was to support …

Respond Crisis Translation has been on the frontlines of political, environmental, and economic disasters across the world.

RCT stepped in to assist the 2026 Global Sumud Flotilla by providing interpreting services at vital training sessions and translating resources for the thousands of activists involved in the movement.

The U.S. is deporting asylum seekers, refugees and other immigrants to “third countries” – places where they have never been, have no community ties, do notspeak thelanguage, have nopassports or phones,and aresubjected to torture.

Looking at the state of the language industry right now so often can make us, as language activists, feel defeated, hopeless, even horrified. LinkedIn is full of stories about how AI is going to take our jobs, screenshots of exploitative agencies offering fake translation jobs or, when they’re real, rates that are completely inhumane. Governments and institutions across the globe …

They come for us translators because translators are a threat to authoritarianism.

They want to silence migrants, they want to silence the oppressed – and so, they target translators. From Meenu Batra, detained by ICE in retaliation for her interpreting work in Texas,to Palestinian translator …

In my work as an Arabic–English interpreter with Respond Crisis Translation, I have had the privilege—and the responsibility—of giving voice to individuals whose stories might otherwise go unheard. One case that has stayed with me deeply is that of Khaled (pseudonym).

One of the most powerful moments of my year with RCT was interpreting for Marwa (pseudonym), a transgender woman who had been detained by ICE since 2024 and was ultimately granted release. This experience reaffirmed why language access …

We wanted to take a moment to show appreciation to all of the Respond Crisis Translation (RCT) Arabic team efforts and share with you the results of the incredible work the team has done this past year.

Felipe’s first interview a year earlier had been rescheduled because he didn’t have an interpreter with him, he said. He hadn’t known at the time that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services requires asylum applicants to provide their own interpreters and can throw out their cases if they don’t.

Amidst the chaos, I found Respond. It was, without doubt, the most luminous choice I could have made during the war.
Yes, it was exhausting — endless displacement, unreliable internet, fear that never lifted — Yet Respond became a fragile, flickering light, guiding me through shadows I could not escape.

To be a translator in Gaza means to be a witness to pain and a voice for the survivors. I work under nearly impossible conditions: no electricity, no stable internet connection, no safety, and constant displacement. Yet I carry on, because this work is my way of surviving, of resisting, and of believing that my future is still within reach.

In the summer of 2023, about 25 months ago, I was like any other student in another country, thinking about where to spend the summer. That summer, my choice was to spend it among the warmth of home, family laughter, and the beach. So, my flight ticket from Berlin to Gaza was ready. But unfortunately, the outbreak of war was faster than my return ticket, …

When I first joined RCT, I was drawn to its mission of providing language access and dignity to people in crisis, especially refugees and asylum seekers from marginalized and displaced communities. As someone who grew up seeing how language barriers …

Today I want to share about what these times are like for the community of Haitian people in diaspora–those of us who, due to difficult circumstances, are away from home. For Haitians, leaving Haiti is the hardest thing in life.

ICE raids, detention, deportation, and border violence are shocking communities, as troops raid US cities, rounding up migrants and bystanders alike, while ICE abducts migrants even at routine immigration hearings. But few people know about the language workers …

Last Thursday, Oct. 30, RCT held a panel at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco to talk about language depravation and it was covered by the LOCAL NEWS MATTERS media.