A lifelong friend of my sister is an attorney and an all around good person. Melanie Gleason has been working as an immigration/asylum attorney with a specific focus on cases on our Southwest border. Her clientele seldom can pay so she needs help.
I don’t often do this but I would like to ask our community to help her out if you can do so. We need to hold to our ideals and help those who are fighting for those ideals day in and day out.
Happy Holidays! How are you? I hope this finds you doing as well as possible—I know it has been quite a year (oof). I also want to apologize for being more out of touch lately; work has honestly been rather tough down here on the border (e.g. on Thanksgiving, I was contacted by a handful of different people whose loved ones were actually detained by ICE that day). So, I am looking forward to being able to connect more in the new year—thanks so much for your support.
I also wanted to share what’s new with Attorney on the Move:
After providing legal services out of my car for a year a half & when #45 won the election last fall, I made the decision to move to the U.S./Mexico border to be on the immigration frontline to help asylum seekers seeking refuge and peace. There have been many difficult days and nights, but it has all been worth it—to see clients released from detention and not feeling alone because they have a lawyer representing them. For a number of immigrant detainees, I am the only person who comes to visit them at Eloy.
In 2018, in addition to providing full representation for asylum seekers on the ground, Attorney on the Move will aim for more scalable impact, including:
- More op-eds elevating the voices of those who are detained and shining the light on other injustices within the immigration system and beyond—such as this piece I wrote featured in The Hill (and then a videographer from The Atlantic contacted me to see if my client’s voice could be featured in an upcoming piece)
- A weekly newsletter starting in early January featuring a curated list of immigration and other social-justice focused articles and commentary—as well as updates on what’s going on here on the ground
- Working closely with other social justice lawyers and advocates to help them launch their own social ventures to address systemic inequities around immigration and other important issues.
I always look forward to the next time our paths will cross—thank you for all you are doing during these wild times. And I’d love to hear more about what you’ve been up to and how things are going over on your end. Happy holidays and I’m grateful to be connected as we move into 2018!
In solidarity,
Melanie
Please help a friend help us live up to our idealsPost + Comments (16)