Francisco Rodriguez, winner of the HILLTOP Individual Achievement Award, can still summon the fear and confusion he felt when the Trump administration detained him in 2017, after officials had promised to repeal a federal program that protected undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.
Rodriguez, 29, had been living under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program since he arrived in the country as a 6-year-old. He was sent to a detention center in Tacoma, Wash., where detainees often wait weeks before meeting a judge to discuss their legal status. “It was a lot of being nervous and anxious about what would happen,” he says. “And once I got there, there were still no answers.”
“Seeing all these other people there — and just hearing from them, how they had been there for up to a year, some people even longer, without having any access to attorneys or anything — just made it a lot harder to have any hope about getting out of there any time soon,” he says.
But immediately after Rodriguez’s arrest, hundreds of members of his community gathered to demand his release, flooding federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement phone (ICE) lines and protesting downtown. Because of the protests, Rodriguez says, he was released just 24 hours after being detained, something that he says has never been seen in his community.
Though the protests and near-immediate release were unique, Rodriguez’s experience being detained was not.
“I came back home and I noticed that the rest of the people in my community were also going through the same thing. They were being picked up by ICE without warrants or anything. I was just the first round,” he says. “The only difference between my story and their story was they weren’t getting any attention.”
Prompted by what he saw in the detention center and his community, Rodriguez founded Pueblo Unido PDX, an organization that supports and advocates for community members facing removal proceedings and works to help them win their cases. Since its creation, Pueblo Unido PDX has helped free 29 people from the Tacoma detention center.
For Rodriguez, the most rewarding part of working at Pueblo Unido PDX is seeing families reconnect especially because he knows many of the families through his job at Reynolds High School.
Rodriguez remembers a student who was particularly distressed after her father was sent to the detention center. “You could tell by the tone in her voice,” he says. “It sucks because these are kids who would normally be cheerful and outgoing… and wanting to learn new things, but they’re just going through situations where they’re just pushed down.”
After Pueblo Unido PDX helped secure her father’s release, the girl’s entire demeanor changed, Rodriguez says. She also told him she wanted to support other families who’ve experienced what hers did.
“As soon as her dad was released, she was back to being happy and doing what she loved to do at school,” Rodriguez says. “She started volunteering with me at the food pantry, and she was on top of it all. It’s just really rewarding to know that you’ve been able to change the kid’s life outlook, but also be able to influence them positively to be able to want to do something to also give back.”
But work supporting detainees can be challenging, Rodriguez says, especially in a system he says is designed against them. Rodriguez says workers at the detention center often slow the process by not allowing clients to easily see attorneys and family or by sending complicated paperwork in English to families who speak a different primary language.
“I grew up here and am fairly good in my English, and even for me that paperwork is hard to understand or even comprehend what the next step of my process is,” Rodriguez says, “let alone for families where English is their second language.”
Despite the challenges, Rodriguez is proud of Pueblo Unido PDX’s impact. Though the organization started as a grassroots movement with volunteers, they now have four full-time employees, and hope to continue to expand, so they can free even more community members from detention centers.
“Two years ago, I would’ve never thought we would’ve made it this far in the amount of time that we’ve been up,” he says.