Description

In partnership with the Migrant and Immigrant Community Action Project (MICA) and the University of Missouri-St. Louis, the St. Louis Inter-faith Committee on Latin America will launch a project to resource and support individuals seeking asylum in the United States. Gathering service providers, grassroots advocates, academic researchers, and asylum seekers themselves for regular workshops and trainings, the project aims to empower asylum seekers as public knowledge makers, while simultaneously attending to the complex role of faith and agency in their lives and immigration system experiences. Its efforts build upon a theologically informed model of “acompañamiento” (accompaniment), rooted in bearing witness and walking alongside those seeking social transformation. Situated within broader efforts to document how immigration system experiences shape understandings of human dignity, the project will focus in particular on how asylum seekers navigate the “alternatives to detention” programs used in U.S. immigration enforcement, producing a variety of public-facing materials and community activities, including a national conference and a book manuscript prepared by asylum seekers.