How Tucson groups are coming together to protect immigrant families facing separation

Carolina Silva and Elizabeth Soltero both noticed how an increase in immigration enforcement this year was impacting the youth they serve through the organizations they lead. Working parents have been detained, often the father who provided the main source of income for a family, leaving families struggling to pay rent and bills, Silva said. Students stopped attending school due to fear and families struggled to afford the high costs of legal fees.  

Silva, executive director of Scholarships A-Z, and Soltero, CEO of the Sunnyside Foundation, taking from the work they’ve done years earlier when they helped undocumented and mixed-status families during the COVID-19 pandemic, reached out to other organizations and together launched the Juntos Fund to assist families with direct cash assistance and pay legal fees for a detained family member. 

The Sunnyside Foundation, which supports Sunnyside Unified School District students in Tucson’s south side, is working with 11 other organizations that are part of the Juntos Fund to raise at least $500,000 to help families over the next four years. The foundation plans to start distributing funds, up to $1,500 per family, later this month on a referral basis. To date, they’ve raised almost $60,000.

As soon as President Donald Trump was elected in November, Silva and the Scholarships A-Z team got together to talk about ways to respond to the incoming administration and its hardline anti-immigrant narrative. Having a fund to support families made sense, but they also wanted to bring in other organizations. 

“It was really clear this is one really tangible thing we could do to lighten the burden for families, and also so they don't feel alone and isolated at this time,” Silva said. “It's one of the most traumatic events that a family could experience, and to just have to go through that without support, that’s even worse.”

Soltero said family separation and the detention of a parent lead to vulnerable situations for Sunnyside students and their families. She emphasized the importance of the community showing up for these families, so they feel seen as they face these challenges. 

“I hope that we can contribute, even if it is a small amount, to some kind of basic need that they have at this moment,” Soltero said. “[I hope] that the gesture of support shows them that someone loves and cares about them. They want them to continue to live and pursue their dreams here.” 

Inspired by Juntos Fund, Tucsonan organizes fundraiser

Anne Dougherty would scroll through social media every day, watching videos of migrants being ripped away from family members by masked agents. She saw Congress increase funding to the Department of Homeland Security and felt “disgusted and heartbroken and devastated and angry, and all the things that you feel when you watch how people are being mistreated and abused, frankly,” she said.  

“It was video after video after video of people being brutalized,” Dougherty said. “And I felt like, ‘I'm tired of watching this. I'm tired of just watching this. So what can I do?’”

She reached out to a friend asking if they knew of any mutual aid organizations supporting immigrants. She already knew of the work The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project does, providing legal and social services to migrants, including children who face deportation or detention. Her friend told her about the Sunnyside Foundation. 

The Juntos Fund and Sunnyside Foundation’s service to the community drew her in.

She and her friend got to work. They reached out to community leaders they knew and organized a fundraiser to contribute to the Juntos Fund and to The Florence Project. 

Last week, more than 100 Tucsonans attended the event at Slow Body Beer Co., among them local government leaders, community organizers and longtime Tucson residents who care about protecting and supporting immigrants. 

“I think what you see here is like this huge intersection of Tucsonans showing up and connecting to a purpose that they feel passionately about, because they identify with our immigrant community, you know, and they identify with the pain,” Dougherty said.

She didn’t expect the brewery’s patio to be so crowded that night. She said people from states like Oregon, Michigan, Wisconsin, California and Washington donated to the fundraiser, and a donor committed to matching up to $20,000 raised that night. They raised $40,500, including the match that night. The funds were split evenly between the two organizations. 

“We can't fix the grief of having your family torn apart. I can't take that grief away. But I can raise money to support in other ways, right? And we can support organizations who are helping our community get access to resources in this very devastating moment.” 

‘We’ve got to be indignant right now’

At the fundraiser, Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, city council members Lane Santa Cruz and Rocque Perez and leaders from the contributing organizations talked about the importance of giving to the two organizations that are helping Tucson’s immigrant community. 

Santa Cruz said it’s essential for the community to work together and urged them to donate to the fund. She asked people to reach out to family members and friends, and to set a personal fundraising goal to help the organizations. 

“In this moment where our communities are being ripped apart in a way that we've never seen before, we thought SB 1070 was bad; this is something else. We've never seen this before,” Santa Cruz said. “And so right now, in this moment, we need to show up for each other.”

Romero, who grew up on the border near Somerton, Arizona, south of Yuma, recalled her mother feeding migrants who stopped by as they reached the U.S., giving them water. 

She asked those present to connect to their own immigrant story and to give until it hurts. 

“My mom and my dad taught me how to give to others and how to serve my community and give whatever we needed to give, because they always told me, ‘there's other people, even though we're poor, there's other people that need more.’

“And so my dad would tell me, ‘Regina, the best type of courage is coraje. ¡Que te de coraje! You have to be indignant, and let that lead you through,’” she said. “And so we've got to be indignant right now, que nos de coraje, and that will move us into doing whatever we need to do.”

Dougherty said while there’s more people can do — from donating to organizations working with immigrants, to protesting and organizing and pushing back — the fundraiser was a good start. Showing up to events helps people connect with others who share similar feelings, and it gives them hope. 

“We need to see more people who are connecting to purpose and connecting to action,” she said. “And in my mind, that's the antidote to the hopelessness.”

To learn more and donate to the Juntos Fund, visit: https://juntosfund.funraise.org/

Stephanie Casanova is an independent journalist from Tucson, Arizona, covering community stories for 10 years. She is passionate about narrative, in-depth storytelling that is inclusive and reflects the diversity of the communities she covers. She recently covered the criminal justice beat at Signal Cleveland, where she shed light on injustices and inequities in the criminal legal system and centered the experiences of justice-involved individuals, both victims and people who go through the system and their impacted loved ones.