Highlighting our Impact: Partnership with Southern Poverty Law Center
"Respond recently translated an English document for an asylum seeker who reads Arabic, and he was granted bond last week! This victory would not have been possible without Respond’s support."
Monica Whatley Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative
(La Iniciativa para la Liberación de los Inmigrantes en el Sureste)
Southern Poverty Law Center
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your story?
My name is Monica Whatley and I live in Columbus, GA (occupied Muscogee Creek land). I was born and raised in Alabama by my immigrant mother and deeply Southern father, which is what led me to do immigrant rights work in the Deep South United States. In this work, I have witnessed the systemic discrimination and injustice toward individuals who speak languages other than English, especially in detention settings.
Can you tell us about SIFI, its mission, and your team? What is your role and what is your day to day like?
SIFI stands for the Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative (La Iniciativa para la Liberación de los Inmigrantes en el Sureste). We are a pro bono legal services project initiated by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2017 to serve people detained at ICE detention centers across the Deep South United States.
In my day-to-day, I collaborate on a four-person in-person team (and a much larger remote team of staff and volunteers) to assist people at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. We meet with individuals in detention daily to answer their questions, help them meet their goals, prepare their court filings and other ICE paperwork, fight their deportation cases, and, ultimately, reunite with their loved ones!”
In what ways has the collaboration with Respond Crisis Translation helped your work or allowed you to do new things that you couldn´t have done before?
We have an amazing crew of staff and volunteer translators who comes from all walks of life, but unfortunately, we do not fully match the rich language diversity of the people we serve. That’s where Respond comes in! Specifically, we rely on Respond Crisis Translation to help us translate documents that are in languages that we cannot understand amongst our internal team of staff and volunteers, such as Tigrinya, Arabic, and Quechua.
Additionally, Respond has helped us expand our services to non-clients. While we have budgeted organizational funds to pay for essential translations for our legal clients, we do not always have capacity or funds to extend those same translation services to individuals whom we do not represent. These individuals often have no one on the outside to help them translate their legal documents or explain legal concepts to them in their native languages. Respond has helped these individuals fight their legal cases on their own by equipping them with legal materials and translating their case files and evidence into English as required by the immigration courts.
Is there a specific success story (or stories) that stands out for you?
I am happy to share that Respond recently assisted me with translating an English document for an asylum seeker who reads Arabic, and he was granted bond last week! We hope that our client will be released in about a week to join his family in North Carolina. We are so grateful to Respond for their swift and high-quality translation services. This victory would not have been possible without their support.”
What are the greatest challenges inherent in your work? Can you share the language-specific challenges and context that come up frequently?
From a legal services standpoint, I would say that the inaccessibility of free, rapid, and high-quality English translation services is one of the top challenges preventing people in detention from being able to advocate for themselves more fully in court. I have observed many individuals in court who gave up on their cases and asked for deportation simply because they did not believe they would have been able to fill out the forms and gather their evidence without translation and/or legal help. One frequent request we get is for updated and unbiased news reports from other countries translated into English to combat the biased country conditions reported by ICE.
Anything else you’d like to add about the importance of language access to your work, or just about yourself / your work in general?
Language justice challenges have been further exacerbated during COVID-19 due to reduced in-person legal support capacity, staff and volunteer shortages, and illness and quarantines preventing individuals from visiting the law library.
Thank you to Respond for literally “responding” to a key issue that has gone unaddressed for a long time, and thank you to the supporters and donors who make their work possible.
Help us make essential language access support possible for all in need →
Since September 2019, Respond Crisis Translation has fought to provide interpretation and translation services for anyone experiencing language barriers.
