Event Agenda:

1. Introduction: Language deprivation and the carceral state

Language is a central tool used to inflict carceral state violence. Yet frontline language workers are too often invisibilized — overlooked, silenced, even disappeared — a mirror of how this world treats the speakers and signers of the languages they work to defend. Language work is an urgent component in the struggle against anti-migrant tyranny on legal and material fronts — and in global justice struggles across the world. 

2. Language Rights Abuses in ICE Custody: Survivors Speak Out

Migrant activists, attorneys, and interpreters discuss the interpreter deficit at the border and in the asylum system, the ramifications of the recent nation-wide implementation of the cruel “Bring Your Own Interpreter” policy — and the alliances forming to overcome them. 

Panel with:

• Alice, RCT Brazilian Portuguese interpreter whose work at the intersection of language and abolition have supported several asylum seekers in being freed from ICE detention  

• Felipe, farmworker rights activist from Colombia, asylee, RCT community member 

• Antonela, educator, activist, and dancer from Peru, ICE abduction survivor, RCT community member 

• Anna, RCT interpreter who interpreted for hundreds of fellow asylum seekers, mostly LGBTQ+ Russians and Ukrainians, while herself held for 2 years in ICE custody

• Abby, attorney at Centro Legal de la Raza

3. Lost in Machine Translation: AI and Language Violence in the U.S. Asylum System 

Facilitated by Dr. Alex Hanna and Dr. Timnit Gebru of the Distributed AI Research Institute, joined by RCT interpreters 

The U.S. government is using unsupervised Machine Translation to process asylum claims at the border. Our team has had to intervene in instances where machine translation threatened the life or the asylum claim of a marginalized language speaker by rendering their case completely incoherent.

Participants of this workshop will experience a small taste of the challenges inherent in being forced to rely on unsupervised machine translations while navigating life-critical systems and resources — a cruel obstacle increasingly imposed upon thousands of asylum seekers and ICE detainees.

4. On the Ground in Gaza: A Call to Action from Palestinian Translators Surviving and Resisting     

Twelve of the translators on RCT’s team are based in Gaza. They work tirelessly to translate for asylum seekers from all across the Arabic-speaking world, even while they themselves face relentless bombardment, genocide, starvation, and communication blackouts. We will share testimony and original poetry by Gheed, Director of Respond Crisis Translation Arabic Team, based in northern Gaza — alongside a powerful call to action from translators in Gaza on her team.

5. Community gathering