Professor Erik Camayd-Freixas was hired to translate -- pure and simple. He was not supposed to talk about what he saw and heard in the secretive, hurried legal proceedings against illegal immigrants swept up in the Postville raid of May 12, 2008.
But the experienced interpreter was so traumatized by what happened at federal hearings in Waterloo, Iowa, that he spoke up, breaking a long-standing code of confidentiality for legal translators.
After his essay about his experience prompted stories and editorials in The New York Times and other media around the world, and triggered a congressional investigation, Camayd-Freixas has taken his message to hundreds of venues from union halls and religious gatherings to law schools and the Internet. His advocacy for immigrants' rights earned him a humanitarian award from the Guatemalan government.
"It was a life-changing experience for me," said the Spanish professor, who will speak at Clarke College Thursday at 7 p.m.
One of 36 federal translators hired to interpret for hundreds of mostly Spanish-speaking workers rounded up at the Agriprocessors Inc. meat-packing plant, Camayd-Freixas watched his clients, all
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Who: Professor Erik Camayd-Freixas, director of the Translation and Interpretation Program at Florida International University, What: "Immigrant Rights & American Values: Postville -- An Interpreter's Experience," When: 7 p.m. Thursday, March 11 Where: Clarke College's Jansen Music Hall Free and open to the public. |
"They were pressed into pleading guilty to identity theft in a system they knew nothing about. They could have been deported, but they were sentenced to five months in prison at a great cost to taxpayers, then they were either sent home or kept here so they could testify in the case against the company," he said.
In many cases, when news of a worker's arrest surfaced in his home village, smugglers who lent money for the worker's trip to the U.S. descended on his family, demanding payment.
"One man told me, while he was in prison, his wife had to sell their little house and take their five children out of school. They are living on a tenant farm, growing corn, working without tools," he said. "The raid, prosecution, incarceration and suffering of hundreds of workers and their families turned out to be costly and unnecessary."
Camayd-Freixas raised money for the Postville Hispanic community and started an immigration reform group on his campus.
"Push for your state to pass something like the DREAM Act. We can't change the past, but for the 65,000 undocumented students who graduate every year, it can be the first step toward change," the professor said.
The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act is proposed federal policy that would allow undocumented high school students to get temporary legal status when they graduate.
Ten states, including Illinois, have a modified version of the DREAM Act. The issue resonates with Camayd-Freixas, a Cuban immigrant who eventually earned his doctorate from Harvard University.
