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FEATURING CASSANDRA LOPEZ - Our nation and our world is overrun by billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power.

This week on Rising Up for Justice, Cassandra Lopez joins us. She is the Litigation Director at Al Otro Lado, a binational organization dedicated to protecting the rights and dignity of immigrants in Mexico and the United States. In this role, she litigates habeas corpus petitions on behalf of individuals in immigration detention and brings FOIA lawsuits to promote government transparency on a range of immigration issues. Cassandra spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about her organization.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, Al Otro Lado, I understand, means “on the other side.” What is the significance of that? How do you describe your organization's main goals? 

Cassandra Lopez: Well, we provide services to people on both sides of the border. So we're based here in San Diego, where I'm located, and in Los Angeles in Southern California, and then we also have offices in Tijuana and Mexico City. And we're really aiming to provide legal services to people that are facing detention and deportation in the United States, and then people that are migrants or have been deported and are on the Mexico side of the border. 

So, we provide no-cost legal services and humanitarian assistance to people on both sides of the border, and who are affected by the really cruel US immigration policies. And our goal is to see freedom of movement and dignity in migration without the need for constant legal intervention to demand that basic human rights be upheld. 

Kolhatkar: Is the fact that Al Otro Lado works on both sides of the borders part of what makes it unique? We have so many immigrant rights groups in the United States, but it seems as though most of them focus on immigrant rights for those people while they're here in the United States, and they don't really often have the capacity, or maybe they just keep their goals narrow and don't as much follow folks if and when they might be deported. Is the uniqueness of your organization the fact that it's cross-border? 

Lopez: Yes, I think that is one aspect of our work that makes us unique. So we are, as I said, providing legal services to people that are facing deportation or detention here in the United States, but then we're also aiming to provide services and support migrants that are either stranded on the Mexican side of the border because of our asylum policies, say, or people that have been deported and need assistance or support reintegrating into Mexico, or perhaps are deported to Mexico but are from another country and need services and support while they're in Mexico. 

And we really aim to provide services on both sides of the border, and we have lawyers in Mexico that work for the organization that can provide legal services in Mexico, and then also can serve individuals that are still located in the United States.

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