interview a woman who has done a lot to change the situation and i'm here in trenton at her new home at six fifteen nineteen for street and this is a wonderful organization a nonprofit the latin american legal defense  education fund and this is maria away they'll welcome thank you so here we are in your office and i know you are tiring and you are very hesitant to come on by yourself because like many of here one of those very humble people too busy so we we need to get this interview done so we can answer found and keep going so i want to ask you you're from madrid you moved to canada you lived a fairly upwardly mobile life yourself you're educated and then you moved to princeton and why did you decide what compelled you to to help this population of people to to help in the degree that you're helping and what was there was your inspiration along for a few years to spend my horizons professionally and personally and going back to to spain at some point as it turned out one thing led to another and i remain in this country became a citizen and eventually and but at some point in time i realized that my spirit was very difficult that the from the experience that many of the many of the latin i asked them why they came and how they came and quickly understood that they didn't have the same option i had of applying for a green card and being able to remain in this country legally and eventually apply for citizenship that avenue was pretty my bart to them why because they were poor they were and they look a bit they came from a country that had too many too many other immigrants coming to this country as is the case of mexico and they didn't have that option so i started to question the inequality and the unfairness of of that situation and and how this affected our lives these were very humble hardworking people who deserved to have what this country stands for like liberty and  the pursuit of happiness like every human being and that's what i make a stand for and it really should you know i began to realize that there was something wrong about our immigration system and the way things were understanding and serving this particular community because they didn't know it that well and because this was a difficult population to reach because of the language and cultural barriers that exist they lived pretty much in isolation  so a group of us met with frequency and changed spears's and tried to come up with with ways to dismantle those barriers in life and access the population and that's how i started to my consciousness conscious of erasing myself about what was going on and i'm interested in how that all happens i mean other words you just go and you meet a few different friends or they also let you know people there were mix of immigration officers coming around to people's homes and then resting the head of household typically the male and taking whatever was in the house leaving the kids and the wife behind and that's when i started to say a nation and we have to first was doing what was the task force doing about that kind of thing or were they just not doing as much as you felt needed to get done i mean like why did you want to start your own organization  in the case of a home invasion by law enforcement agent agents so and that requires a very technical knowledge which we don't have the time but we needed to become a little you know a little more groups to kind of know about one another right but what you started to realize is that that we need so much more i mean we have all our many homes are being invaded i think stepped away and there's this is really like we need to understand the legal framework we needed to out to do so when you started with this other group of people and you said to yourselves i mean in the legal american legal defense and education fund i mean you guys are incorporating a lot right so how did you decide was it a first was it was it legal defense and then you added education or was it all on legal defense and why did you choose those items as the sort of the key components of what your organization was about because we wanted to do the advocacy piece and the advocacy piece requires suggesting better policies so there's a lot of indication so it's not so much social work that you're doing no i mean you're not getting going in and helping people i mean you are helping them i saw on your website there's the job postings there is education opportunities like  that you develop but i feel that what are your your real impulse was wow this is this is criminal what's happening in people's families are not criminals should be perhaps this yeah well it should be but the people are this is this is really serious we have to get in there illegally figure out what they're doing that's you know what how we can prevent this from happening how we can educate the people that it's happening to because they are hiding away because they are so afraid of being deported and so that was your main focus at the beginning right right and how was your organization changed from when you started i mean like how did it develop and what sort of obstacles did you find that you ran into what we you know within a few years would realize that the political gridlock  landscape and because in the past people would come here make money go back to their country maybe start a business maybe bring the money back and it was sort of like they weren't even really staying here is long but now the irony of this new system that was started was not only do you want you get here if you leave you can never come back right right becomes very expensive and and you're risking your life every time you come because you have to cross the desert or swim across the river or get yourself and you know to put yourself in the hands of human traffickers in the truck was almost like it's legalizing drugs in a way i mean it's almost like when you when you make something so impossible to come across and you're creating that criminal people will come to work because if their lives are that miserable in guatemala or and or as or some of these places so i'm bill a unbelievably difficult they're going to come and now you're saying is now you you know if we catch you will deport you right and you can't go back and come back against the no more freedom so in fact we have more people here stuck right yes meeting their whole family is to come back correct right so we've done the opposite with then just the becomes the come here now saddled with the dead maybe five ten thousand dollars so they're getting across just from getting across some oh they spend a couple of years just repaying the dead before they can even send any money to the homes of syrian people coming in there are in the countries like in africa and places like in belgium and all those mean when people get stuck in a place and they're not considered citizens and not considered a part of that country and they're not incorporated into the  right you take away so many things from people's lives what are they going to take away their humanity you take their humanity away and you reduce them i mean sometimes what i experience with people i interview you know if any of these sort of wealthy overly resource people were to live one day some of the people i interview and the kinds of conflicts that they haven't in your case just by being latino you know i mean you don't have the money you don't get your car breaks down and then you know now you can't go to that area because you might be caught and it's just how much harder can we make it it seems really so when you started your organization that was one of the biggest problems is getting worse and worse for you and so what are you doing about that w people you know there are families here who've been here for they kate and some more than two decades with u s citizen children who have grown up here and still are living in the shadows so that that is very fair to them now if you have a if you have a child in this country and you're not you know you didn't you don't have the papers you're not an authorized citizen can you to some things that we take for granted for instance health health care you need to hold you are granted charity care and tried to care is only granted if you have a condition so you have  for your children if they have to go to the doctor if you have to take them to school if you have to take them to soccer practice or whatever you know your kid kids your family's life is going to be impoverished in new jersey if you can't drive in mercer county today right and so either you drive illegally and risk the consequences which mean you know stopped you can only find probably a few hundred not a few thousand dollars even risk immigration service being that go forward and how does that feel yeah are you being helped out by this lovely gentleman here ye come back and pay you back and now we're going to bring on your new executive director great and so we'll be right back we're back with what is your last name and busy day and i have just  absolutely really anything that would be socially better for it to benefit the country as well as to benefit the vigils personally so i think a lot of as a great organization to donate to and to support and to fund i'm such a because we're helping the community people who are residents of this unity to improve what's available the access that they have to different programming and just the betterment for the overall family thank you so much that things are so maria we're going to have to close and i know you're going to be closing your chapter