Attorneys on the Front Lines of the Migrant Crisis
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Film Synopsis
Las Abogadas follows four women immigration attorneys over a four-year odyssey as the U.S. Government under President Trump upends every law to protect those fleeing from violence and war.
From setting up a legal clinic in a Volkswagen bus in the middle of four thousand desperate migrants, to forcing border guards to follow the law and accept three disabled children into U.S. custody, to crossing the border to counsel African migrants stuck in Tijuana, to giving legal advice in the brutally hot Mexican sun to families desperate to see American soil — we watch our characters’ surreal journeys to try and help.
Rebecca, Charlene, Jodi, and Mulu face intense desperation and frustration. Days are filled with endless and crushing defeat. On occasion, a success—a family reunited and offered the chance to plead their case for asylum. We watch as Rebecca writes a parent’s phone number on a child’s arm in Sharpie and bundles her up to send her into the freezing detention center in San Ysidro. “If this was my daughter, I would hope someone would be there for them,” she says, fighting back tears.
As Covid-19 shuts down international borders, trapping the migrants in a political quagmire and global pandemic, our four attorneys struggle to find ways to continue their quest to help one brave and anguished soul at a time. We will follow Rebecca, Charlene, Jodi and Mulu into the Fall of 2020, to the day of the Presidential election. We feel their gripping anxiety as they witness what could usher in some semblance of hope, or bring about their greatest fear.