Resilience

This book is about the lived experiences of first-generation Latino and Latina (Latinx) students in Washington state, combined with an analysis of immigration enforcement practices. The book explores the work of the University of Washington Center for Human Rights, particularly its work to defend and promote immigrants’ rights in Washington state.

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This book is about the lived experiences of first-generation Latino and Latina (Latinx) students going to college in Washington state, combined with an analysis of immigration enforcement practices. The experiences of resilience and creativity exhibited by Latinx students offer a stark contrast with the human rights violations by law enforcement agents, whose collaboration with immigration enforcement is against the law in Washington state.

The book explores the work of the University of Washington Center for Human Rights, particularly its work to defend and promote immigrants’ rights in Washington state. The Center documents the collaboration and information sharing of local and state law enforcement with federal immigration enforcement agencies, which predominantly target Latinx communities in Eastern Washington. Since such collaboration and information sharing is now illegal under Washington state laws, the findings of the work of the Center for Human Rights can be used by frontline human rights organizations in Washington state to advocate for stronger compliance by local and state law enforcement, and stronger protection of immigrants’ rights. In addition to documenting the work of the Center for Human Rights, this book offers a collection of oral histories from UW students or alumni from Eastern Washington who self-identify as Latinx. Latinx is a gender-neutral term for individuals who descend from Latin American ancestry and culture.

These Latinx stories offer a glimpse of the rich lived experiences in some of the communities that suffer the racial profiling and abuses of immigration enforcement. These are the communities of migrant farmworkers that tend and harvest the fruits and agricultural produce of Washington, the communities of origin of many of the students at the University of Washington.