On Wednesday March 1st, our group virtually met with Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Ana Little. She is currently the ACIJ and was promoted in early 2021 by President Joe Biden. Her experience includes being an immigration judge in San Francisco and having a solo pratice in Highlands, New Jersey. Our group talked with Judge Little to hear about the specific variety of the cases she sees everyday.

Judge Little told us the most common cases she sees day to day, which include cases of unacompanied minors crossing the border. She notes that these minors could adjust their status of citezenship in court. In these circumstances Judge Little hopes for the possibility of a “peer review” which is also done in court. She also talks about what could ruin a person’s possibility for citezenship. This include criminal charges that can be as small as a speeding ticket. I enjoyed this interview because it gave our group a deeper look on the process of legal immigration cases. This interview was very much informative.

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On February 18th, me and various peers went to the Paley Center for Media to attend a workshop discussing how women are portrayed in media. When we arrived, the head of the workshop, Rebecca, lead us into an auditorium where we then discussed what impacts our body image as young women. While reflecting on this topic, most people said either their families, friends and TV. Outside influences can heavily determine how you look at yourself compared to others.

After we talked, Rebecca showed us a mirage of clips from tv, movies and music videos that depict women in certain ways. A lot of them we were familiar with, such as Brittnay Spears’s video for “Hit Me Baby One More Time” and Bratz commercials. Subsequent to this, we discussed the best and worst portrayals and why we thought so. Themes from this conversation include the sexualization of young girls and the blatant misogyny that shows up every day.

I found this workshop very interesting because even though it was not apart of my social justice topic, I could branch out and learn more about other topics. I also reflected on the representation of women of color in general because you have that intersection where misogyny and racial steryotypes are rampant. The fact of the matter is, women in general are a heavily sexualized group, starting at a very young age and are told to be submissive to what men say. What we put online and what is generally avaliable to the public has the power to either continue or change that narrative.

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On Wednesday February 16th, our group had the pleasure of meeting with Razeen Zaman, the head of the NYU Immigration Defense Initiative, (NYUIDI). Zaman discussed how the creation of the NYUIDI was brought on as the direct result of Donald Trump’s harsh immigration laws. Students and their family members were stuck in legal battles against ICE, with little guidance. Zaman saw this, and looked to help students and their families by educating them about their rights against ICE, what ICE can legally do, and sometimes provide legal representation.

Zaman also spoke about how she thinks immigration will change in the future. She notes that legeslation may become less hostile, but we cannot get our hopes up. This interview was a great segway into looking at the future of immigration in our country. From Mr. Gutierrez talking about the history of latin immigration just hours before, and Ms. Zaman explain current issues, it gave me a picture of immigration as a whole.

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On Wednesday Febuary 16th, our group had the pleasure of meeting with David G. Gutierrez. Gutierrez is a UCSD historian and professor that specializes in Latino history and immigration. He told us about how he grew up in east Los Angeles around a lot of immigrants and immigrant families and how studying latin history and immigration was always going to be his path.

Gutierrez also said how ever since Donald Trump entered office, the issue of immigration has been brought to the surface in the form of a president spewing hateful things about latinos. He also notes how the white population is decreasing because white people are getting older and having fewer kids. This is because more immigrants are coming to the US and doing jobs white people don’t like including jobs in the food industry and farming. Because more immigrants are working and having more children, that in addition to the white population decreasing leads to a population shift.

I really enjoyed this interview because this was our group’s first interview and I feel like this was a great way to jump into fieldwork. I also think that my group gained a lot of information as to why Latin Immigration is a prominent topic.

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On Jan 20, my group presented about our social justice project to the class. I helped create the slideshow, and wasn’t nervous at all because I learned a lot in our initial research. One of the things I shared in the presentation was how the crime rate in some countries leads to many migrants flocking to the US, only to be turned away.

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On January 26th, my group presented about our social justice project to the class. We had spent the prior week working on these presentations. I was excited because it was the first time sharing our inital research with our classmates. While researching, I was startled at how latin american immigrants get treated much worse than other immigrants. I feel like due to Donald Trump centralizing immigration on how he thinks Mexicans are bad for the US, that led to latin immigrants, and latin people being treated worse in our society. In summary, when Central American immigrants are trying to escape violence in their own countries, in the US they are met with inequity.

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