Center the Criminalized: The Importance of Intersectional Case Campaigns
Session Type(s): Panel
Starts: Thursday, Oct. 7 1:00 PM (Eastern)
Ends: Thursday, Oct. 7 2:00 PM (Eastern)
The summer of 2020 brought the country’s focus to the fact that, by design, policing and incarceration criminalize Black people and communities of color. When people are deemed eligible for release from prisons or jails, ICE funnels them directly into its system of detention and deportation, utterly frustrating criminal justice reform efforts. Attorneys, advocates, communicators, and impacted individuals share what immigrant rights advocates need to know about the entanglement of the criminal and immigration systems; the specific challenges encountered when working on a “crim-imm” case campaigns; and the messaging strategies we should employ to ensure that no one is left behind — through language or policies.
Moderator
Sirine Shebaya
Sirine Shebaya is the Executive Director of the National Immigration Project. She is a longtime immigrant rights advocate who focuses on combining litigation and public campaign strategies to defend and advance the rights of immigrant communities of color. She was one of the lead attorneys litigating COVID-related detention issues nationwide. She also co-led a movement of lawyers, organizers, translators, and concerned citizens doing rapid-response work at Dulles Airport in the aftermath of the Muslim Ban. She has litigated several high-profile cases alongside and on behalf of communities impacted by family separation, discriminatory police practices, immigration detention and enforcement issues, and the Muslim Ban. In partnership with local community groups, she led a campaign that resulted in eliminating ICE holds in most jurisdictions in Maryland. Sirine previously worked at the Capital Area Immigrant’s Rights Coalition and at the ACLU of Maryland. She has experience in litigation, public education campaigns, and advocacy focused on immigration detention and criminal legal system issues.
Sirine’s work with immigrant communities has been honored with the Capital Area Muslim Bar Association Award for Outstanding Pro Bono Service and Commitment to Advancing Justice, the Americans for Democratic Action Winn Newman Equality Award, and the National Immigration Project Daniel Levy Award.
Panelists
Erika Andiola
Erika Andiola is a former Congressional Staffer for Arizona Congresswoman, Kyrsten Sinema and co-founder of the DRM Action Coalition. Erika started her community organizing experience when she co-founded the Arizona Dream Act Coalition. She then served in the National Coordinating Committee and the Board of Directors for the United We Dream Network. Her personal struggle as an undocumented woman herself, with an undocumented family, has given her the drive and the passion to keep fighting for immigrant rights.
Arianna Rosales
Arianna Rosales is the Senior Communications Manager at the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild where she leads the organization’s digital and press strategies. In this role, Arianna also staffs the Comm/Unity Network, a cohort of communicators dedicated to ending the criminalization of immigrants, and the Immigrant Justice Network, a collaborative of legal, grassroots, and advocacy organizations that aims to address the needs of people caught in the intersection of the immigration and criminal legal systems.
Prior to joining the National Immigration Project in 2021, Arianna was the Communications Manager at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center where she supported local, state, and national advocacy efforts primarily around immigration detention and enforcement issues. Previously, Arianna was also the Communications Manager at the New York Immigration Coalition, an umbrella policy and advocacy organization that represents over 200 immigrant and refugee rights groups throughout the state of New York. She began her career in communications as the Deputy Editor and Production Manager at the Stanford Law School, where she managed the production of all print and digital pieces.
Arianna is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and holds a BA in English Literature from Stanford University.