Michelle Kuo & Albert Wu Assistant Professors
C R I S I S AT
THE BORDER This summer, AUP Professors Michelle Kuo (History, Law, and Society) and Albert Wu (History) traveled to San Antonio to volunteer with the legal aid organization RAICES. What follows is a short Q&A about their experiences.
Q: WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO TRAVEL TO THE BORDER? A (Albert): Like many, we were horrified by the stories emerging in May and June of this year. The images of children separated from their parents struck us deeply. We felt powerless, and Michelle, in particular, had a deep sense that we needed to do something to help. Before moving to Paris, she worked as a legal aid lawyer on behalf of undocumented immigrants in the Bay Area. She reached out to some former colleagues who recommended that we contact 21
AU P M AGAZ I NE
RAICES, the largest organization offering legal aid to immigrants in Texas. They had recently launched a Facebook campaign that raised 20 million dollars in a couple of weeks. The fact that there was such an outpouring of support for the group reflected the grassroots anger that Trump’s policies had engendered. We later learned later that RAICES staff had been flooded with requests to volunteer. We were lucky – even though they were still figuring out how to manage the flow, they allowed us to come along. Once Michelle said she needed to go, I knew I wanted to be there, too.
Q: WHAT DID YOU DO WITH RAICES? A (Albert): We were originally scheduled to spend the entire time in the detention center in Karnes County, about an hour south of San Antonio, helping asylum seekers with their applications and preparing them for interviews with asylum officers. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were late in giving us authorization, so we ended up spending the first week in the RAICES office in San Antonio. We helped process bail bonds, passed out supplies at the Greyhound bus station, and helped file cases in the district courts.
