By making a tax-deductible donation to the production of Las Abogadas documentary film, you will be a part of bringing to light the ways that the U.S. legal system is currently failing not only migrants but American and Mexican attorneys who work within the legal system to save the migrants' lives. Unlike previous films on the topic of migrants and refugees, we present our film subjects as a bridge to connect with American and global audiences, to create a dialogue, and to help push for new and more humanitarian legal policies.

As we move into the editing and production phase of our film, which has been following our attorneys as they continue their heroic fight for justice against incredible odds, we need your help.

Your donation will be cover post-production technical costs. We will be stringent and dedicated in our work, documenting the true and incredibly important narrative and producing a feature-length film to be released in the fall of 2022.

Attorney Charlene D’Cruz welcomes a blind Cuban asylum seeker. She worked for weeks to get this client into the United States.

Attorney Jody Goodwin briefing asylum seekers in Matamoros, Mexico, just a month before the border is shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo: bordereport.com

Las Abogadas Film Synopsis

Las Abogadas follows four women immigration attorneys and the migrants they help over a multi-year odyssey as the U.S. government upends every law to protect those fleeing from violence and war.

​From setting up a legal clinic in a Volkswagen bus in the middle of five thousand desperate migrants, to forcing border guards to follow the law and accept a blind woman into U.S. custody, to crossing the border to counsel African migrants stuck in Tijuana, to giving legal advice in the brutally hot Mexican sun to families desperate to see American soil — we watch our characters’ surreal journeys to try and help.

 

Attorney Mulu Alemayehu attends online Ethiopian Orthodox Easter services a month into the COVID quarantine. Mulu was crossing the border each month in Tijuana to counsel refugees from Africa until the borders were shut down.

Attorneys Rebecca Eichler, Charlene D'Cruz, Jodi Goodwin, and Mulu Alemayehu face intense desperation and frustration. Days are filled with endless and crushing defeat. On occasion, a success—a family reunited and offered the chance to plead their case for asylum. We watch as Rebecca writes a parent’s phone number on a child’s arm in Sharpie and bundles her up to send her into the freezing detention center in San Diego. “If this were my daughter, I would hope someone would be there for them,” she says, fighting back tears.

As COVID-19 shuts down international borders, trapping the migrants in a political quagmire and global pandemic, our four attorneys struggle to find ways to continue their quest to help one brave and anguished soul at a time. While the 2020 election brought a moment of relief and great joy for Rebecca, Charlene, Jodi and Mulu, the new administration continues to shut out refugees, bottlenecking desperate men, women and children at the border—now with even fewer services, security and support. In 2021, we continued to follow our lawyers as they navigated a hopeful beginning that, in turn, created even greater challenges than they could have imagined.

Meritxell Calderón Vargas, a lead player in defending trafficked women migrants in her home city of Tijuana, says that there is so much more intelligence on what the migrants go through today than a decade ago. "Because the people are talking. Because they have cell phones, they have voices. People that are professionals are migrating, and they can tell us their stories with all these details that we didn't have before. It's a very interesting time for defending human rights.”