Speakers

Keynote Speakers

Roberto D. Hernández

Roberto D. Hernández (Xicano) is an associate professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at San Diego State University and an actively engaged, community-based researcher, scholar, teacher and writer. He is the author of Coloniality of the U-S///Mexico Border: Power, Violence, and the Decolonial Imperative (Univ. of AZ Press, 2018) and co-editor of the anthology Decolonizing the Westernized University: Interventions in Philosophy of Education from Within and Without (Lexington, 2016).

 

Nandita Sharma

Nandita Sharma is an activist-scholar whose research is informed by the movements she is a part of, in particular No Borders movements and those struggling for a planetary commons. She is Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa and the author of Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of ‘Migrant Workers’ in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2006) and Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants (Duke University Press, 2020).

 

Session Presenters

Jessica Aguilar

Jessica Aguilar is a Ph.D. candidate in the Literature Department at UC San Diego.  She completed her B.A. in Spanish Literature and Latin American Studies at UCSD and earned an M.A. in Spanish from New Mexico State University. Jessica’s experiences as a first-generation transfronteriza from the San Ysidro – Tijuana borderlands, inform her understandings of border relations, [im]migration, social mobility, language studies, and education access. Her research interrogates how fictional narratives of Central American transmigration challenge and assist the construction of “racializing assemblages” to fit the [im]migrant body into categories of the human.

Jacqueline Arellano

Jacqueline Arellano is a licensed acupuncturist, counselor, and organizer, living and practicing in the California borderlands she calls home. Jacqueline grew up in the Imperial Valley/Mexicali border, and when she became involved with border activism felt called back home to be of service to the swelling humanitarian aid crisis along the rural California border. Jacqueline co-organizes water and supply drops in the California desert as a part of Border Kindness and has provided health and educational services in Mexicali shelters assisting families awaiting asylum. She believes in providing not just relief to border communities, but also resistance against the cruel administrative practices inflicted on the people by the governments involved and is an open critic against border militarization.

Scott Bennett

Scott Bennett is a photographer and Spanish professor at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, CA. His research focuses on visual culture in Latin America and border studies. He has a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from UCSB and published a photobook focusing on key themes in Latin America titled “Fleeting Roots: Moments in Latin America/Raíces fugaces: momentos en Latinoamérica” in 2019.” He has exhibited photos in New York, San  Diego, Tijuana, and Tuxtla Gutiérre.

Madeline Brashear

Madeline Brashear is a Staff Attorney for the Children and Families Practice Group with Legal Aid Chicago. Madeline’s work at Legal Aid Chicago focuses primarily on serving survivors of domestic violence in family law and Order of Protection proceedings. Madeline graduated magna cum laude from Loyola University Chicago School of Law in 2022. While at Loyola, Madeline interned with the Center for the Human Rights of Children, volunteered with Loyola’s SUFEO (Stand Up For Each Other) program (which assists children and families with advice in school discipline proceedings), and volunteered with the Immigrant Detention Project. Additionally, Madeline interned for the Immigrant Rights Projection at the Los Angeles LGBT Center and worked with LGBTQ migrants and asylum seekers. Prior to law school she received a master’s degree in War and Society at Chapman University, where she focused her research on the experiences and relationships among women’s organizations during the dissolution and war in the former Yugoslavia.

James Cordero

James Cordero has dedicated his life to providing humanitarian aid and studying along the United States/Mexico border since his first Water Drop in June 2016. As Water Drop Co- Director at Border Kindness, James leads groups to areas along the southern border to leave water, food, and other critical supplies in locations unseen by nearly most people in the world. A vocal activist, James speaks out against law enforcement overreach, social injustices, along with correcting myths and fallacies presented by the United States government and mainstream media. For years, James has documented the rise in militarization along the southern border of the United States, the desert terrain migrants cross through, and the international migration crisis along the southern border. Publishing photographs, real stories and providing humanitarian aid along the U.S./Mexico border has led to being listed on United States and Mexico federal watchlists.

Sarah Diaz

Sarah Diaz, JD LLM is the Associate Director of the Center for the Human Rights of Children and Lecturer in the School of Law at Loyola University Chicago. Ms. Diaz has worked at the intersection of child migration and human rights for fifteen years, most recently providing consultation services to NGOs working on human rights, migration and international criminal law issues. Prior to her work in consulting, Ms. Diaz served as the National Case Director for the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights where she co-coordinated and helped facilitate the expansion of the Young Center from two to eight offices with a primary focus on the development, coordination and consistent application of a novel legal approach in an emerging area of law (specifically, importing the framework for the best interests of the child under international law into the U.S. immigration legal framework). Prior to joining the Young Center, Ms. Diaz spent seven years as an attorney and Clinical Instructor with the Asylum and Immigration Law Clinic at DePaul University College of Law. There, Ms. Diaz created and taught multiple clinical programs including the Immigration Policy Advocacy Clinic, the Advanced Immigrant Detainee Clinic and the Legal Resource Clinic.  In addition to her work as a Clinician, Ms. Diaz also provided legal representation in immigration cases before the DOJ and the Seventh Circuit as well as immigration consultation and legal training in response to technical assistance requests from community-based immigration legal services providers. Ms. Diaz began her career at the National Immigrant Justice Center with the Children's Protection Project representing detained unaccompanied children on their cases for asylum, human trafficking, special immigrant juvenile and U non-immigrant visas.

Odessa Gonzalez Benson

Odessa Gonzalez Benson is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work and Detroit School of Urban Studies. Her areas of research are refugee resettlement, grassroots organizations, participatory practice, state-civil society relations and critical policy studies, with three broad aspects to her research.

D. Emily Hicks

D. Emily Hicks is a professor emerita at San Diego State University (Ph.D. UCSD, undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley and UCSD). She taught in the departments of Chicana/o Studies and English and Comparative Literature. She is currently a member of the Complexity Lab Group directed by the geophysicist B.T. Werner at Scripps Institution of Oceanography/UC San Diego. She is the author of “Border Writing” (University of Minnesota, 1991), “An Introduction to Complexity Pedagogy: Using Critical Theory, Critical Pedagogy and Complexity in Performance and Literature” (Myers Education Press, January 2023) and “Parables” (Lived Places Press, 2024).

Katherine Kaufka Walts

Katherine Kaufka Walts is the Director of the Center for the Human Rights of Children at Loyola University Chicago. The Center represents, coordinates, and stimulates efforts of the Loyola University community to understand and protect the human rights of children utilizing an interdisciplinary approach. Prior to joining Loyola, Professor Kaufka Walts served as the Executive Director of the International Organization for Adolescents (IOFA). At IOFA she developed several projects in the U.S. and abroad advancing the rights of children and youth, including a program to develop the capacity of the child welfare system to better respond to child trafficking and exploitation cases. Prior to IOFA, Professor Kaufka Walts managed the Counter-Human Trafficking project at the National Immigrant Justice Center, where she worked with several local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies on single and multiple-victim sex and labor trafficking cases. She successfully represented dozens of victims of human trafficking in the United States within immigration and criminal justice proceedings under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

M. Isabel Martin-Sanchez 

Estudiante de doctorado en el programa de literatura española en la Universidad de Wisconsin-Madison. Mi interés de investigación es la performatividad de la frontera entre México y Estados Unidos, particularmente cómo se representa narrativa, visual, teatral y sonoramente. Asimismo, exploro cómo la migración y los derechos transnacionales, a través de las humanidades y las ciencias sociales, pueden ser puerta de entrada de comprensión y análisis de conocimiento fronterizo. Actualmente, estoy trabajando en la escritura de mi tesis doctoral y soy uno de las organizadoras del taller Borghesi-Mellon “Migrant Media and Artivism” que aborda paradigmas de justicia social, inclusión y diversidad.

Thelma Navarro

Growing up as a transborder migrant from the Baja region, Thelma has had a changing, lifelong relationship with the US/MX border. Her work for border and migrant communities began by organizing health fairs in the border town of Tecate and community health fairs for immigrants across LA county. Thelma’s involvement with humanitarian aid at the border began during her time as a public health graduate student at SDSU. Her border experience and her public health training have informed each other over the past years, deepening Thelma’s understanding of the human condition during migration.

Emma Newman

Emma Newman (she/her pronouns) is a second-year doctorate student in the Anthropology Department at Texas A&M University. Her research mobilizes participant-observation data collection to answer questions related to the migrant experience in South Texas. Emma is especially interested in the impact of state violence on physical migrant bodies. She became interested in this work after being involved in community organizing in my hometown in Northern California. In her work, Emma strives to practice decolonial, feminist methodologies that contribute to scholarly efforts to center identities and experiences that have been historically marginalized.

Luis Osuna

Luis Osuna is a Xicano filmmaker and media curator focused on approaching storytelling through a non-extractive, social justice lens. He also volunteers along the U.S.-México borderlands with organizations such as No More Deaths, Border Kindness, Colbrí Center for Human Rights. For this panel, I’d like to focus on discussing humanity and consent in storytelling and media surrounding migration, and deaths and disappearances as a result of migration.

Dulce Real

Born to first-generation immigrant parents from Nicaragua and Mexico, Dulce grew up with a deep understanding of the challenges faced by undocumented communities surviving under US politics and values. From a young age, they witnessed firsthand the devastating effects of systemic inequalities and the systematic mistreatment of undocumented workers in the service and labor industry. Fueled with a deep sense of anger at the slow pace of change and the inability of state programs to provide meaningful support to those in need, Dulce became involved in mutual aid initiatives. Since the age of 18, Dulce has been involved in migrant service worker’s advocacy groups and has assisted with direct water and supply aid along the border.

Sophia Rodriguez

Sophia’s involvement with humanitarian aid at the border began during her graduate study at SDSU in public health and Latin American studies. She is a first-generation Latina with Peruvian and Mexican parents and is currently completing her doctorate in medical anthropology. Her current research is focused on recent arrivals and undocumented migrants in the Eastern Coachella Valley. Sophia’s work posits that the body is in a constant state of dysregulation post-arrival and works with Dr. Jacqueline Arellano at the free clinic to understand this social relation with the border and rural communities.

Roxana Rodríguez Ortiz

Roxana Rodríguez Ortiz es ensayista, literata y filósofa. Doctora en Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada por la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. Especialista en Critical Border Studies, con experiencia en incidencia en materia de política fronteriza y migratoria a nivel local y federal. Actual línea de investigación: Ecología del Afecto. Ha escrito diversos artículos y capítulos de libros en publicaciones nacionales e internacionales y siete libros de forma individual. Profesora de filosofía en la Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México donde fundó los grupos de investigación Estudios Fronterizos y Ecología del Afecto.

Perla Torres

Perla Torres is Colibrí’s Family Network Director. She is originally from Hermosillo, Sonora, and migrated to the US with her family in 1999 and was raised in Tucson, AZ. Perla earned her bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Pre-law from the University of Arizona, where she focused on immigration law reforms and justice for migrant rights. Post-college, Perla has continued her focus on social services while working as a Case Manager for the Office of Refugee Resettlement working in the reunification of unaccompanied minors in the US-Mexico border with families who reside in the US. She continued her work as the Children’s Specialist for the Guatemalan consulate in the Border Protection team. Perla continues her dedication to migrant rights as Colibrí’s Family Network Director. She will continue a legacy of work to build solidarity, community, a movement among families who have experienced loss at the border.

Victoria Vazquez

Victoria (V), a second-generation immigrant with a binational identity, has been serving the migrant community through hands-on outreach, education, and activism since her undergrad years. This continued through her graduate studies, where she focused on human rights. Her work along the border with migrants and as a humanitarian was influenced by her own personal and family history with migration. She has worked in emergency refugee shelters between the San Diego and Tijuana region and now continues her humanitarian work with Border Kindness as a Water Drop Route Leader.

Abby C. Wheatley

Abby C. Wheatley is an honors faculty fellow at Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University, and holds a Ph.D. in social and cultural anthropology. Her research spans two regions, the U.S.-Mexico and EU-Africa borders, and considers the mechanisms through which migration becomes a dangerous and deadly endeavor, as well as the strategies developed by migrants to survive precarious crossings. Incorporating more than ten years of experience working with people in transit, her work examines the strategies developed by transnational communities to overcome a weaponized landscape created by border enforcement.

 

This conference is co-organized by the Center for Human Rights and the Fred J. Hansen Peace Chair, with the generous support of The Peacemakers Fund at the San Diego Foundation, as well as the Bruce E. Porteus Professor of Political Science and the Center for Latin American Studies.