Sean Oh
Fellowship Location: USA (Los Angeles)
Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project
Over the course of this internship, I asked myself countless times, “What is happening?” That seems to be the best way to put it. The narratives and experiences that each client brought with them presented them with greater complexities than I originally imagined. It is an absurd concept to deem an individual as “illegal,” so rather than using the term “illegal immigrant” for them, I will use “undocumented” or “refugee.” We learned and read about their stories in class at school, but they became so much more real when a face, a body, a family, was tangibly identified and sitting in front of you crying as they retold their stories of trauma.
And yet, all of that was a mere half of the equation. There seems to be a new policy every week regarding immigration. New laws and new types of enforcement strike fear in ongoing waves. The individuals whose lives have already been wrapped in strife and discrimination continue to face trauma even after they escaped their countries and livelihoods for the sake of survival.
Institutions such as Esperanza Immigrant Rights Projects are not common, though the demand for their services is high. As a result, the firm has a constant inflow each day of hundreds of refugees in need of help . While the firm has approximately 300+ cases at any given time, there is a physical limit to how many cases that it can take. As a result, the firm has a department called the Immigration Court Helpdesk (ICH) that is staffed on a rotating basis by all of the firm attorneys. The organization has two locations, one located at the actual court and one in the larger office in house. Refugees come in to share their stories during an official intake so that the attorneys can assess their situation and offer the resources and information relevant for them to apply for asylum or related refugee status.
In July, I had the opportunity to sit in on these official intake meetings to hear stories of trauma ranging from domestic abuse, gang violence, political oppression, and more. I remember one particular intake with a mother and child from the Northern Triangle region of Central America. This intake was conducted entirely in Spanish. I do not speak Spanish, but thankfully, another intern translated what was going on for me. The child kept insisting for me to play with him, and at one point, he asked me to draw him an illustration of Peppa Pig. Never would I have thought that I would be drawing Peppa Pig during my time at this internship, but nonetheless I did!
What was so striking to me was this child’s positivity and laughter. I wondered to myself, when was the last time you had heard such a pure laugh? Despite the trauma, the resilience that this child had was inspiring. I felt myself tearing up and wanting to cry, but I realized it would take away from their experience and pain and instead shift the focus to me, so I fought to hold it in. Hearing their story, I could feel the trauma vicariously and thought, this is human rights.
To fight for human rights is to fight for the baseline necessity to live.