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At the U.S.-Mexico border, immigration attorney Anna Marie Gallagher met a woman whose story broke her heart. “My church saved a woman’s life,” Gallagher said. The Catholic Community of Greenbelt raised the money for Gallagher to go to Port Isabel Detention Center, outside Brownsville, Texas. There Gallagher met “Lucia,” who had fled from the threat of being killed by her partner. After guards told Lucia she was about to have her hearing, she was separated from her 5-year-old daughter, her youngest child. “My client slept with her daughter every night of her life,” Gallagher said. The child was sent to Lucia’s older son, but Lucia wasn’t sure where she was. “The children had been scattered all around,” Gallagher said. “I prevailed in the case before a judge after two hearings. [Lucia] was released, but it takes somebody with 30-years’ experience to win. Those who live in a community with access to an attorney, their chances for success are much greater.”
Gallagher is a member of the Catholic Community of Greenbelt, an Intentional Eucharistic Community formed in 1985 and consisting of around 30 members. The community’s commitment to social justice led them to fund Gallagher’s journey, as she explained: “Our Intentional Catholic Community provided funds for me to make two trips and represent [Lucia] at her hearing. We won a form of humanitarian protection for her, and she is now reunited with her children. She was separated from her little girl for almost one year without notice or explanation that it would happen – [it was] cruel almost beyond belief.”
Gallagher, who has made immigration and refugee law her life’s work, has lived in Greenbelt since 2016. She is executive director of CLINIC (Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc.), the largest coalition of immigration legal services organizations in the U.S., with 365 affiliate nonprofits. CLINIC advocates for justice in immigration policy, provides legal services to immigrants and trains legal representatives to give legal services at the border. Gallagher explains how CLINIC expands access to legal representation by training non-lawyers: “In the immigration system you can be a non-lawyer as long as you get accredited by the Department of Justice. You have to have so many hours of training, and show that you are working for [an accredited] nonprofit, and have good moral character.”
Gallagher explained that asylum must be granted “if somebody comes to the border saying they were persecuted on the basis of race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, political opinion or membership in a particular social group” such as LGBTQ persons, or those fleeing domestic violence or gang violence. CLINIC finds legal representatives for people seeking asylum, puts together cases and finds volunteer lawyers to represent them. Gallagher stated, “You have a right to come to the border and say ‘I’m afraid.’ We have to admit you and find out if there is a basis. We can detain if we think they’re a threat to the security of the United States. Now, with the criminalization of immigrants seeking asylum, if you’re coming to the border you remain in Mexico. It’s an egregious human rights violation based on restriction of poor, brown and black women and children. But they’re in places along the border where there are not enough lawyers. It eliminates access to asylum and protection.” A small handful of legal representatives organized by CLINIC faces a caseload of over 12,000 asylum seekers.
Born of Irish immigrants and raised in Philadelphia, Gallagher studied political science and Spanish at Temple University before attending Antioch Law School (later part of the University of the District of Columbia). In early 1992 she met her husband, Juan Luis Guillen, a journalist, when they were both working in Guatemala City. Gallagher has worked in direct advocacy, private law practice and in academia, in the U.S., Central America and Europe. Gallagher helped found the International Coalition on the Detention of Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Migrants, as well as the Center for Human Rights Legal Action. At the Center for Applied Legal Studies, Georgetown University Law Center, Gallagher taught asylum law and procedures to law students in a hands-on setting.
When asked what motivated her to work in immigration law, Gallagher pointed to Luke 12:48, “From those to whom much has been given, much will be required,” adding, “We forget we belong to each other.”