Nearly a year ago, when Trump announced his Travel Ban (AKA “Muslim Ban”), Camille Mackler was one of the first legal responders on the scene. “I headed out to JFK when I woke up Saturday on the morning of January 28th because I saw the news alert about people being detained and thought there must be more than just these people,” says the attorney who is the Director of Immigration Legal Policy at New York Immigration Coalition. “So I went out there and everything sort of grew.”
Broadly recently spoke to Ms. Mackler about her advocacy work, and here are some snippets from the interview:
– “The overarching theme to my year has been bringing lawyers together and forging collaboration and encouraging communication where there was none. Lawyers, at least in New York, are working together, communicating with each other, and being really supportive of each other in ways I’ve never seen happen before…. Maybe part of that is that we’re united against a common adversary.”
– “This administration is trying to work against immigrants so I’m trying to make sure our legal system remains fair, remains balanced, and remains what we all think a legal justice system should be”
– “I believe immigrants should be allowed to be here and the administration thinks they should all leave. In terms of hope, in my better moments, yes. I think that we’re going through something very very painful right now but something that we needed to go through as a country. Conversations we’ve never had before around race or around gender, around discrimination, immigration, we’re having those conversations we’ve always managed to circumvent.”
– ” I think in 2018, the administration has definitely learned their lesson—you saw with the travel ban there was all this chaos at the airport. People learned their lesson, and we did too. We’re stronger, we’re talking to each other more. I’m looking forward to that. I’m also looking forward to being a quarter of the way through this administration.”
