By Donald Gilpin

The Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund (LALDEF) will be holding its Third Annual Stakeholders Meeting on May 29, 5-7 p.m., at the Nassau Presbyterian Church on Nassau Street.

“LALDEF has been the key advocate for immigrants in Mercer County and Central New Jersey for one and a half decades,” said immigration lawyer and LALDEF advisory council member Ryan Lilienthal, one of the featured speakers at the May 29 event. “It’s invaluable and irreplaceable. LALDEF is advocating for people who otherwise would go unrepresented.”

Four times the size it was only two years ago, LALDEF serves 3,000 people from its headquarters Casa de Bienvenida/Welcome House in Trenton’s Chambersburg District. In her invitation to the May 29 gathering, Board Chair Patricia Fernandez-Kelly emphasized the
organization’s contributions to the immigrant community in Princeton and Trenton.

“Are you experiencing compassion fatigue?” she wrote. “This is not the time for you to lose heart. On behalf of justice, LALDEF fights the good fight.” Mentoring students in transition to college through the FUTURO program; offering citizenship class for green card holders; providing tax preparation assistance, ESL training, and referrals to legal advocates; and supplying ID cards for people to safely interact with schools, banks, clinics, and stores are among the services LALDEF provides.

In addition to Lilienthal, featured speakers at the stakeholders’ meeting will include Denise Brennan from the Institute for Advanced Study, LALDEF’s Supervising Attorney Aleksandra
Gontaryuk, and former immigration judge and LALDEF board member Susan Roy. Also speaking will be several young men and women talking about LALDEF’s FUTURO Program and the experience of being a DREAMER or being under DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) protection.

LALDEF Executive Director Adriana Abizadeh noted the lineup of speakers, which includes three immigration attorneys, all closely tied to LALDEF. “The speakers will provide firsthand insight into the realities of the immigration system and changes they’ve seen. The entire
night will provide a glimpse into our work and its impact in Mercer County as we work tirelessly to equip immigrants with the tools to advocate for themselves and fight for change.”

Lilienthal, a LALDEF supporter since its founding in 2004, said that he would be speaking about the “business side” of immigration. LALDEF has focused on serving the low-income Latino immigrant community, but Lilienthal emphasized, “We’re all in this together — blue collar, white collar, research organizations, industry, people who just want to keep their families together.”

Noting that “the approach of this administration is one that’s never been seen before,” Lilienthal pointed out that, with the Muslim travel ban, its first target is legal immigrants based on their national origins, which “impacts Princeton and towns like Princeton in a serious way.” 

He continued, “Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study have a long history of attracting the most qualified individuals from around the world to do critical work. It has become difficult for them to do their work.” Lilienthal also mentioned the disruptions to New Jersey’s high tech and pharmaceutical industries.

Noting that John Witherspoon, Hugh Mercer, Alexander Hamilton, and Albert Einstein were all immigrants, Lilienthal stated that the current problematic status of immigration policy “represents a different America, both for those fleeing and those who want to keep us at the forefront of knowledge and industry.”

“Do we want to be this kind of country?” Lilienthal asked.

In her invitation and appeal for financial and volunteer support, Fernandez-Kelly described “asylum seekers stuck in for-profit detention centers; immigrant children stranded in foster care; nearly 10,000 persons dead while trying to cross the border since 1998; workers pushed into the shadows for lack of immigration reform; and neighbors seeking opportunity in Princeton and Trenton summarily detained and deported.”

She continued, “Your gift nourishes striving newcomers whom our government is treating as disposable weeds. We will put your dollars straight to work, upholding this country as a place of opportunity, decency, and fair play — the kind of country you and I want to live in.”