"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
I grew up a stone’s throw away from the New York harbor where Lady Liberty resides. As the granddaughter of Italian immigrants, I always took her promise of welcome for granted.
But California native Evelyn Wiese knows a different story. Our immigration system is broken. There are currently has about 20,000 people in detention. We have not always welcomed the stranger. We do not treat our migrants with dignity. As you will hear in this conversation, despite the promise to protect victims of violence and persecution, we treat migrants as though they were prisoners, detaining them often in squalid conditions for the “crime” of wanting a better life.
Evelyn is committed to fighting to dismantle the U.S immigration detention system and, more broadly, for the human right to migration. She received her J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.
You can listen to Evelyn’s episode here.
To get involved with the fight for Immigrant’s Rights, contact one of the organizations below: