ImmigratioN ADVOCACY & LEGAL SERVICES

We are the first Maya or Indigenous led organization to offer free immigration legal services to Maya and Indigenous migrants in the U.S. Our legal advocates are fluent in Q'anjob'al Maya, Mam Maya, Spanish, and English. Besides speaking Indigenous languages, our legal advocates have valuable knowledge and conceptual understandings of Maya and Indigenous protocols, culture, social organization, cosmovisions, and governance. CMPI and our advocates are also seeking U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) accreditation so that Indigenous non-attorney advocates can serve Maya and Indigenous migrants as DOJ accredited representatives. We are deeply grateful to our partners and friends at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) and the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild for supporting these efforts and providing training and materials to our Maya and Indigenous Advocacy Team.

Our goal is to advance and promote Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination as conceived of in our own Indigenous legal systems, cosmovision, and under international human rights frameworks. We also seek to transform the practice of immigration law, human rights, and civil rights law by bringing our advocacy, cultural knowledge, and linguistic skills to these areas of law and policy. We believe that Maya legal advocates with agency and voice will better represent the interests of Maya and Indigenous Peoples and shouldn't have to depend on others to speak for us.

We Are the Experts in Ourselves

We believe that we are the experts in ourselves and that our own traditional Indigenous ways of living, knowing, being, and models of shared governance informed by our cosmovisions and spiritual understandings are crucial to our survival and the survival of the planet. Even well-meaning advocates that do not understand us as Indigenous peoples mostly fail us in their advocacy. We offer technical training on best practices for working with Maya and Indigenous migrant legal cases in the areas of U.S. immigration and human rights. Our community leaders have frequently provided expert witness testimony before the immigration courts and USCIS in support of Maya community members seeking asylum in the United States. These testimonies, competent interpreters, cultural competence, and other legal support we provide have prevented the deportations of several members of our community and helped many gain legal status within the United States. ​

Leadership Matters

Our legal services program is currently led by Co-Executive Director, Carolina Martin Ramos (Mexica Mestiza/Tsalagi). Carolina is an immigration and human rights attorney with years of experience working in nonprofit leadership, private practice, and state and federal agencies. Carolina has spent years working with Maya and Indigenous migrants, victims of human trafficking, victims of gender violence, and refugees. She traveled to Maya Territory to work with Maya plaintiffs in the Matter of Ms. L federal litigation after U.S. immigration separated children and their parents at the U.S. - Mexico border. She also worked with refugees as an asylum officer with the USCIS, RAIO, Los Angeles Asylum Office. Carolina has responded to many crises at the southern border over the years and also volunteered at the Red Owl Legal Collective (aka Water Protector Legal Collective) at the Standing Rock Sioux Nation during the No DAPL movement and serves on the board of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) Water Protector Legal Collective (WPLC). She is a graduate of the University of New Mexico School of Law where she studied International Indigenous People's rights, Federal Indian Law, and Traditional Indigenous Law & Governance. Carolina is training and supervising our future trilingual Maya DOJ accredited representatives so that we bring Indigenous knowledge, perspectives, and linguistic skills into the practice of immigration law. ​

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