Central America and
Mexico
THE CRISIS
Centuries of colonialism, U.S. imperialism and foreign intervention, civil war, and climate disaster have compounded to force hundreds of thousands of Central Americans and Mexicans to flee their homes to the U.S.-MX border.
Upon arriving, Mexicans and Central Americans are subjected to racism, the detention and deportation machine, and an asylum system that is built to criminalize instead of protect.
The systemic shortage of Indigenous language interpreters and translators is a barrier that impedes mobility at every single juncture of the asylum process and leads countless migrants to face deportation or to languish for months or even years in detention centers and/or dangerous conditions at the border.
OUR INTERVENTIONS
DIRECT SERVICE
1,201 cases
4,863 pages
421 ,172 words translated
$ 64,793 value
$ 7,952 paid
$ 56,841 value pro bono (value minus paid)
4,032 people served
Our team translates thousands of asylum cases and provides hundreds of hours of oral interpreting support every year in support of Central American asylum seekers. We also translate the rapidly changing border policies into dozens of languages for those directly impacted as the only language access organization on the California Welcoming Task Force: Rapid Response Translation of Crucial Border Policy Changes.
Since the launch of the CBP One mobile app, we work around the clock to support Central American asylum seekers, especially those who speak Indigenous languages, in navigating this extremely glitchy and complicated app which all asylum seekers must use to initiate their processes and which is not available in Indigenous languages.
Glitchy CBP One app turning volunteers into Geek Squad support for asylum-seekers in Nogales
WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT
377 team members (linguists) /
5 on leadership29 countries
50 of jobs created (paid positions)
$61,770.65 paid out to linguists
“Respond created trainings for Indigenous community members who had never before accessed professional trainings. This means that asylum seekers have a qualified interpreter for the first time ever, and at the same time, Indigenous language speakers are accessing dignified jobs through this work”
- Colectivo Vida Digna
SYSTEMS CHANGE
We have mobilized interpreters and translators to directly close the language gaps migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers encounter when seeking safety and dignity.
“Migrants are more likely to be denied asylum if they speak an uncommon tongue, according to researchers from Syracuse University.
Laura St. John, legal director at the Florence Project, recalls a client who did her first interview in Spanish instead of her native Chuj.
She was deported and spent eight years appealing her case because of errors in her file from that first conversation.
“That mistranslation came back to haunt her through the entire proceeding,” - St. John says.”
Respond has launched the language rights defense project to combat the language rights abuses that force countless Indigenous language speakers to experience deportation and detention at the hands of the racist U.S. immigration system. We have successfully intervened to appeal over 20 cases where language rights abuses against Indigenous language speakers have led to a deportation order, securing legal victories and asylum protection.
When I asked Elizabeth the word for freedom in Kaqchikel, her native Mayan language spoken in Guatemala , she told me there is no direct equivalent. She provided her own poetic translation: Nq'isamuj' y manq'i pahe tu'j which translates to: “luchar sin detenerse” - ¨to fight without being stopped¨…