Here is the transcript of a panel event hosted by Respond Crisis Translation and leads across our Ukrainian & Russian, Southwest Asian and North African, Haitian Creole, Spanish, and Indigenous & Marginalized Languages teams.

Earlier this month, on March 21, Representatives U.S. Representatives Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.), and Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), and 27 other House representatives called on the Department of Homeland Security to address serious concerns …

By Leila Lorenzo, Laura Wagner, Ariel Koren, Juan Camilo Mendez
Since its launch in October 2020, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has required asylum seekers at the southern border to use the agency’s CBP One mobile app to schedule their appointments to enter the country.

Respond Crisis Translation’s Haitian Creole (Krèyol) Team completed hundreds of projects in 2023 – of these, 60 were asylum and/or immigration cases. We also helped mental health professionals provide psychosocial support, worked on several projects related to …

At Respond Crisis Translation, every win is hard-fought. Working at the frontlines of suffering, injustice, and violence worldwide, we cherish every success and piece of good news we receive about the clients we serve.

Here are two recent success stories that testify to the life-changing impact Respond's work has for these clients.

Late one Friday afternoon in early March, one of our partner organizations, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), contacted me with an urgent request: to translate and subtitle a video from their Haitian partner organization, the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) discussing the fight for justice for victims of sexual violence…

Language violence against asylum seekers on the border is increasing.  All asylum seekers are now required to use the government’s new glitchy CBP One Mobile App in order to initiate the asylum process. It is only partially accessible in 5 poorly  translated languages. As our Haitian Creole Team Lead recounts in the article…

“Immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers are particularly vulnerable to a range of human rights violations, including violations of the right to adequate housing. Displaced persons are also particularly vulnerable to discrimination, racism, and xenophobia, which can further interfere with their ability to secure sustainable and adequate living conditions.”

Danielle Josyle, shares about a project she did outside of her work with Respond. We honor all that Danielle does.

“I wanted to write a story about the earthquake that was also about ordinary people and everyday life. I wanted my characters to have complex interior lives, and have ordinary joys, concerns, relationships, and dreams, because as we all know there’s a kind of flattening and dehumanization that happens in a lot of …

The wonderful translators on our Haitian Creole team worked on several projects in June 2022. Here are some highlights:
The HC team provided oral interpretation services for Las Americas in partnership with VICE News for a piece where they interviewed Haitian asylum seekers. (Publication TBA). They also …

We wanted to share an update on the incredible work our Haitian Kreyol translators and Team Leads have been able to accomplish. Thank you to everyone who supported the mutual aid fund which has helped make all this work possible…

How Respond’s Kreyòl Interpreters Are Assisting Haitian Migrants at the Southern Border
Many of you have probably seen the horrifying photos from Del Rio, Texas: U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback, chasing Haitian migrants as they attempted to cross the Rio Grande…

As the Biden administration begins to unravel Title 42 and MPP, chaos at the border ensues as asylum seekers struggle to figure out what is happening with changing immigration policies…

15 translators and 5 project managers on the Respond team worked for months to translate hundreds of pages of Pro Se materials into Arabic, Bangla, French, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Portuguese, Punjabi and Russian in collaboration with our wonderful partners at Southern Poverty Law Center.

Respond’s Spanish and Haitian Creole teams will be doing simultaneous interpreting for the release of Embracing Our Strengths, a two-part, immigrant-designed and immigrant-led project to address the needs of undocumented and mixed-status immigrant families through improved state policy…

Our partner Immigrant Defenders shared good news this week! We are so proud of all of the translators on our Haitian Creole team, led by Krystel Alexandre, for their tireless work to support asylum seekers. We are so happy that our client Josie is finally safe and free…