Combining community organizing, legislative, and legal strategies for highest impact, Pangea is cultivating a force of 500,000 undocumented immigrants in Northern California to win citizenship for all nationally, and close all immigration detention facilities in the state.
One-in-four of the country’s 11 million undocumented people live in California.
The U.S. operates the world’s largest immigration detention system. The majority of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. are migrants who escaped poverty, violence, and persecution in Mexico and Central America, conditions often resulting from U.S. foreign or economic policies. Under democratic and republican administrations alike, they are denied basic rights and services, exploited for labor, and face the perpetual risk of incarceration and deportation.
Pangea serves immigrants and asylees in California. Their primary need is a legal pathway to remain with their families in the U.S. The majority of our community members are mono-lingual Spanish-speaking. Many are also disabled, indigenous, indigent, unhoused, and LGBTQ+.
We cultivate the leadership within our immigrant, undocumented and asylee communities and support them to achieve collective goals.
Over the past five years, anti-immigration policies have been on the rise, under republican and democratic administrations alike. As more people reach the U.S.-Mexico border fleeing poverty and violence, new laws criminalize migration and new policies make it harder to win asylum. During this time, Pangea has expanded its work from beyond legal services, to legal empowerment of community members, like Anastasia and Katy, in support of policy change.
Under the Trump administration, Anastasia was arrested by ICE as she dropped off her child at school. After she called the local rapid-response hotline, Pangea won Anastasia’s freedom from detention, reunified her with her child, and won her case. Months later, she successfully urged lawmakers to pass legislation, shutting down private prisons like the one where ICE incarcerated her. Today, Anastasia is a frontline leader organizing with other Pangea clients and immigrant families to win Papeles Para Todes/Citizenship for All.
Katy was an asylum seeker who fled violence in Honduras. Due to a Biden era policy expediting certain cases, her case was set for a final hearing before she could find an attorney. Katy’s judge had a 63% denial rate. But Katy participated in Pangea’s and DSCS’s Asylee Legal Empowerment Partnership (ALEP) workshop to learn how to represent herself in court, and won asylum for herself and her daughters. Today, Katy is a community leader who co-instructs the asylum self advocacy workshop.