This is a special blog post by our Paralegal Diana Mateo, who has been inspired to write by the Black Lives Matter movement to speak out about anti-blackness in the Latino community. A version in Spanish is available here.
Hi friends, this is Benach Collopy paralegal Diana. As a Latina immigration professional, I want to share some thoughts with our BC friends and clients on some troubling issues I’ve seen in our non-Black Latinx community and on ways we can be better allies to our Black siblings.
The law as passed by Congress is very clear as to who may seek asylum in the United States. Immigration & Nationality Act Section 208 states:
Any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival and including an alien who is brought to the United States after having been interdicted in international or United States waters), irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum in accordance with this section or, where applicable section 235(b).
On May 4, 1970, U.S. National Guardsmen shot and killed four people protesting the Vietnam War. The massacre, known as the Kent State shootings, topped a tumultuous decade that spurred a lot of violence against those making then-controversial claims to civil rights. In the aftermath of the shooting, many Americans blamed the protesting students and cited violations of law allegedly committed by the protestors. What was not in dispute was that four young people lost their lives that day at the hand of troops acting under the flag of the United States.
During these difficult times for our country, when the Trump Administration has suspended the refugee resettlement program and attempted to paint all refugees as terrorists and security threats, Benach Collopy has continued the fight for human rights, including the right to seek asylum and protection from persecution.
We are pleased to introduce our Clients of the Month for February 2017, Karla Duran and her six-year-old son Anthony.
This post was written by Liana Montecinos.
Thirsty, hungry, at the brink of exhaustion, and with fear of violent deaths looming large back home is how many Central American children cross into the U.S. I know this because I have the privilege to work with child refugees in my capacity as paralegal at Benach Collopy and previously as a legal assistant at CAIR Coalition. But, I also know this because, like the children I work with now, I fled my native Honduras at 11 and I also crossed through Guatemala and Mexico via foot.
This is a big week at Benach Collopy as a number of important projects are coming together and we are very excited to share them with you.
First, we are very pleased to introduce Maria Celina Marquez as the inaugural Benach Collopy- Whitman Walker Health Fellow for Trans Asylum. This fellowship is a collaboration between Benach Collopy and Whitman Walker Health, to provide a law student with a summer fellowship to work on asylum cases for transgender people.
Writing in today’s Leadership Blog from the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Dree Collopy explains the fundamentals of asylum law the critics, journalists, and politicians fail to understand:
Any refusal to recognize gender-motivated violence such as rape and domestic violence as persecution worthy of protection under the Immigration and Nationality Act and the U.N. Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees reflects a complete lack of understanding of women’s relationship to the state and their own governments’ failure to provide adequate protection.
At Benach Collopy, we share the outrage over the terrorist massacre in Paris. We weep for the families who lives where turned inside out by a murderous death cult. As residents of another Western capital, we are all too aware that we are also a target of the missionaries of hate. Now, in the name of protecting us, many politicians call for an end to refugee admissions.
In Avendano-Hernandez v. Lynch, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled today that the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) made an error of law in denying protection under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) to a transgender woman from Mexico who had been sexually assaulted and raped by members of the Mexican police and military. Apparently, an immigration judge and the BIA got it so wrong that it took an appeal to the Court of Appeals (a step below the Supreme Court) to reach the right decision.
This is a special blog post by our Paralegal Diana Mateo, who has been inspired to write by the Black Lives Matter movement to speak out about anti-blackness in the Latino community. A version in Spanish is available here.
Hi friends, this is Benach Collopy paralegal Diana. As a Latina immigration professional, I want to share some thoughts with our BC friends and clients on some troubling issues I’ve seen in our non-Black Latinx community and on ways we can be better allies to our Black siblings. 
