We are proud to celebrate Young Center’s Child Advocate Program Director Gladis Molina Alt who was honored by the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Arizona on Saturday, December 7th. The Randy Tunac Courage in Immigration Award, named after a dedicated defender of human rights, celebrates those who have contributed to the legal immigration profession, served immigrant communities through advocacy, and brought awareness to pressing immigration issues. Gladis was honored with this award for her years of service to immigrant children and families, at the Young Center and before that at ProBar, Kids in Need of Defense, and the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project. We’re proud to work alongside the 2019 recipient of this award. Below is an excerpt from Gladis’s acceptance speech.

I did not have the honor of meeting Randy Tunac because I moved to Arizona in 2011, two years after Randy passed away. I can’t imagine what it was like for his wife, Felisa, to have her partner admitted to St. Joseph’s Hospital two days before Christmas and then for him to pass away two days after Christmas 10 years ago. Tonight, I hold Felisa in my heart; wishing her ongoing courage, which is to say, strength in the face of grief.

Courage is also the ability to do something that frightens us. In my life, I have had plenty of moments when I felt like the character of the Lion in the Wizard of Oz. One of those moments was when my dad and I were at the INS building in Downtown L.A for his third naturalization interview. We were both inside the adjudicating officer’s room—this was about 20 years ago when they allowed family members to be present for interviews—and the officer was down to the last question for my dad. The officer said, “Please name a civil rights leader in the United States.” My dad looked at me with a blank stare on his face. And my heart sank with fear that might fail the exam this one last time. Then suddenly, I said, “What street do we live on?” My dad jumped up, with his hands in the air, and said, “Martin Luther King, Jr!”

I was glad that I opened my mouth to say something. I did not even think about the officer getting mad at me for saying something. I just did it because for me, the fear of my dad having to go through the application process all over again was simply not an option. You see, my dad getting his citizenship meant that my mom, two of my brothers, and I would not have to be undocumented for several more years. For me as a high school kid in the late 1990s, that is what courage looked like.

Nowadays, courage looks like the Dreamers that tell their stories in public and advocate for a path to their citizenship. Courage looks like the attorneys and advocates that stand for immigrants’ rights, whether in the courtroom, at a rally, in detention center, or in even across the border in Mexico. Courage looks like the immigrants themselves who despite their fear of being exhorted, threatened, separated, detained, deported, and outright rejected still strive to find safety and a better life for themselves and their families. One of the deepest fears in us as human beings is that of rejection. Rejection is unsettling to our need for love and sense of belonging. Yet, despite the current climate of rejection, they still come.

Tonight, I honor the courage in the immigrants we serve as a community, and I honor your courage as attorneys and advocates to stay in this work despite the obstacles we now face in the immigration system. It takes some level of inner strength to stay in it, and you are in it.