Inside the Guide you’ll find in-depth research and examples, practical tips and guidance, case studies and exercises.  And this Q&A blog post with WITNESS’ U.S. Immigration Legal Fellow and author of the Guide, Leila Shifteh, offers more about what the Guide is and who it’s for. 

Download the full guide here. You can also access just the Legal section here, or just the Filming section here. 

And join our Facebook Live conversation to learn more about using video as evidence in immigration legal proceedings on December 8th 2pmEST to hear from Leila Shifteh,  author of the guide,  Michelle Quintero, senior attorney at Brooklyn Defender Services’s New York Immigration Family Unit Project , and Benjamin Prado, long time community filmer with American Friends Service Committee San Diego. For Spanish interpretation you’ll need to register on zoom. 

This resource was a true labor of love, time, and passion for the potential of community filmers and lawyers to better work together in order to support immigrant rights. We extend our deepest gratitude to the following individuals and organizations. The knowledge you shared with us and your feedback have been invaluable: 

Yasmine Chahkar Farhang, Richard Bailey, Genia Blaser, Golnaz Fakhimi, Eva Bitran, Jodi Ziesemer, Andrew Wachtenheim, Yasmin Sokkar Harker, Ellen Pachnanda, Meghan McCarthy, Sarah Deri Oshiro, Mitra Ebadolahi, Liz Kenney, Adriana Piñon, Alexandra Smith, Margaret Garrett, Sarika Saxena, Brooklyn Defender Services, Immigrant Defense Project, the creative brilliance and guidance of the WITNESS U.S. Program team, Palika Makam & Jackie Zammuto, and the tremendous vision of Kelly Matheson of WITNESS, who conceived of the original Video as Evidence guide for the international human rights legal context! It takes a village.

We would also like to thank Brooklyn Defender Services, the American Civil Liberties Union, Media Tank, and Variant Strategies for so generously giving us permission to use beautiful stills from their powerful animated video series, We Have Rights. And Gregory Buissereth for the stunning illustrations.

Our U.S. program team have been partnering with affected immigrant communities, advocacy groups and allies over the last year and a half. Through our Eyes on ICE program, we provide “know your rights” and video documentation trainings for how to safely and effectively capture details of encounters with ICE and Customs and Border Patrol. The program has provided crucial information and resistance to communities at a time when raids and arrests by the agencies are up significantly across the country.

Al Jazeera spent time with us during a series of trainings in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas earlier this fall and reported on our work with our partners the Equal Voice Network and communities there and throughout the United States.

From “The Listening Post”:

With the president’s ceaseless talking and tweeting about threats like a government shutdown if Democrats refuse to fund his border wall, or that migrant caravan from Honduras, stories about ICE and its sister agency, CBP – Customs and Border Protection – are right up there on the mainstream media’s agenda.

But the role the media play in this particular narrative goes well beyond just covering the story. Over the past year, NGOs and legal advocacy organisations have collaborated with media outlets to track cases of enforcement abuse. And they train communities to use their own media tools to document wrongdoing.

Cases like that of Perla Morales-Luna, Juan Hernandez, or Romulo Avelica Gonzalez are just three examples of thousands that surfaced because they were caught on camera, explains Palika Makam, programme coordinator, WITNESS.

“Eyewitness footage has been so crucial in exposing ICE’s manipulative tactics. Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez was arrested by two ICE agents who were in unmarked vehicles, wearing jackets that only said ‘police’. There’s a reason why they don’t identify themselves, they are trying to use manipulative tactics to get information from immigrants or people who they’ve racially profiled in order to arrest and deport them.”

Watch the full report here:

“One of the best ways of fighting your deportation case, or making a claim for asylum, or for being able to stay in the country is to actually have documentation of what happens when ICE shows up at your door or when ICE tries to arrest you or pick you up,” Palika said. “More times than not Ice violates their own policies or some constitutional law.”

The article also spoke about our recent training on the border in Texas and how she taught three small communities on how to prepare for any interactions with ICE and Border Patrol officials.

Read the entire article here.

Since the election of Donald Trump, both immigration enforcement and media coverage of immigration-related issues in the U.S. has risen dramatically. WITNESS is bringing together journalists and grassroots advocates to discuss the impact this coverage has had on immigrant communities and explore ways journalists can amplify the stories of immigrants more safely, ethically and effectively.

This conversation is part of the WITNESS Media Lab’s Eyes on ICE project, an initiative dedicated to supporting directly impacted communities and allies to document abuses against immigrant communities and use video and technology to fight deportations and advocate for immigrant rights.

MODERATOR

• Garry Pierre-Pierre – Founder of The Haitian Times, Founder of CUNY Journalism’s Center for Community and Ethnic Media

PANELISTS

• Rong Xiaoqing – Reporter at Sing Tao Daily
• Palika Makam – U.S. Program Coordinator at WITNESS
• Ginger Thompson – Senior Reporter at ProPublica
• Bruna Bouhid – Senior Communications Manager at United We Dream
• Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) – Network member w/ translator Albert Saint Jean, a BAJI NYC Organizer

Full bios for the participants, location details and the full program can be found on the RSVP page.

While some cities have attempted to craft protective policies to minimize ICE interference, these agents are relentlessly finding loopholes to exploit these communities. In New York City, where local officials have declared that the city would resist the White House’s crackdown, ICE raids are still happening. A new battlefront for these officers has become the courthouses of the city.

In an effort to educate and inform people that they have the right to film and document ICE officials, WITNESS along with Immigrant Defense Project (IDP), and New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) created a new resource informing people of their rights to film at courthouses.

The information in this resource is specific to a New York City-based audience, but many aspects can be applicable to communities in other spaces. It offers important information about your rights and best practices for documenting an incident. Remember: Always use your best judgment and assess risks to yourself and those you are filming before hitting “record”.

For more on our work to combat ICE abuses, check out our series, “Eyes on ICE.”

The screening was followed by a conversation on the importance of storytelling, documentation and knowing your rights in the current immigration landscape. This conversation was led by Emma Whitford, a journalist focusing on the human impact of immigration enforcement, and featured filmmaker Abby Goldberg, Supervising Attorney of Immigration at BDS Nyasa Hickey, survivor of family separation, Carlos de Jesus, and our very own U.S. Program Coordinator Palika Makam.

After the panel, our U.S. team held an impromptu training on how you use your cell phone to document abuses against immigrant communities, learn more about your rights, and how you can support grassroots organizations working on the frontlines of immigration justice.

Head over to our Facebook page to watch a video recap of the event.

In the article and accompanying video, we share practical tips for those who may be most vulnerable to these increased ICE raids and arrests, as well as practical considerations for any of us who may be witnesses to these events.

Through the strategic use of eyewitness video, we are creating a new era of transparency and pathways to justice. Visit our library to check out free resources on how to deal with ICE officers and how to document their abuses safely, ethically, and effectively. 

The Google News Lab Fellowship is a 10-week fellowship program designed for students interested in the intersection of media and technology. Successful applicants join a three-day workshop at Google’s campus in Mountain View, CA where they receive training on a number of digital tools before they join their partner institutions.

Erin is a researcher and technologist working in data science, information ethics, and algorithmic bias. During her time as an undergraduate student, she worked in the Paris newsroom of the International New York Times and was an editor for a nonprofit street paper that provided employment and an outlet for the marginalized homeless population in her community. She has since pursued her Master’s in Information Science from the University of Washington Information school where she studied data science and human-computer interaction. Before coming to WITNESS she conducted research with the Technology and Social Change research group as well as the Mobile and Accessible Design Lab at the University of Washington and was recently a research fellow for the Information Interaction Lab at the University of Michigan.

The Google News Lab fellowship has allowed Erin to continue exploring the design and use of accessible and ethical information systems for journalists and citizens alike. Erin is conducting a 10-week project involving network analysis of manipulated visual content and context targeting immigrants and activists which will culminate into a report for WITNESS partners and a publication on computational propaganda.

The WITNESS Media Lab is dedicated to advancing the role of eyewitness video in human rights documentation and advocacy through innovative video curation as well as resource development and thought leadership.

Technology, video and social media have become everyday tools for activists around the world- but they have also become tools for repressive governments and other bad actors. Although the National Security Agency documents leaked by Edward Snowden led to a national conversation about mass surveillance, the threats posed by such spying are mostly hypothetical. Unfortunately, the threats posed by targeted surveillance are anything but hypothetical. Communities, especially those that remember the abuses of the FBI in the 60s and 70s, do a lot to protect themselves- but there is always more to know.

The discussion will be moderated by our own Dia Kayyali, who coordinates WITNESS’ tech + advocacy work, engaging with technology companies and working on tools and policies that help human rights advocates safely, securely and ethically document human rights abuses and expose them to the world.

When: Thursday, March 15, 2018, 7-9pm

Where: Matter, New York, NY (more details in RSVP link)

Our panelists include:

Virginia Eubanks – Author of Automating Inequality: How High Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

Sarah Aoun – Co-Founder of Tandem

Bina Ahmad – Public Defender of The Legal Aid Society

Luba Cortes – Rapid Response Coordinator at Make the Road New York

Kei Williams – Movement NetLab // Organizer-In-Residency at Civic Hall

Refreshments will be served! Sound interesting? RSVP here.

For activists: Grassroots Digital Security Training

When: March 16, 2018, 9am-5pm

Details and to RSVP click here.

Join us to hear how these groups are documenting and organizing around encounters with immigrations and customs enforcement (ICE), and learn more about their approaches, challenges, and vision for a way forward. As ICE expands the deportation system and priorities for deportation, communities and grassroots groups like these continue to lead the way – fighting back, challenging mainstream narratives, and documenting abuses.

Register to attend #EyesOnICE: Community Responses: http://bit.ly/EyesOnICE_Webinar2

You can view our first webinar #EyesOnICE: Know Your Rights and Practical Tips for Documenting ICE here (also available in Spanish). Presentation slides from the webinar are also available to download and use in your own community work.

For general Know Your Rights information on encounters with ICE, check out IDP’s website (available in multiple languages) or our tip sheet for Filming ICE in English or Spanish.

Featured Organizations:

Make the Road New York builds the power of Latino and working class communities to achieve dignity and justice through organizing, policy innovation, transformative education, and survival services.

Their model integrates multi-issue, multi-generational organizing – on workers’ rights, tenant rights, LGBTQ justice, youth power and policing, public schools and education justice, immigration justice, and climate – with an array of wraparound services that create a space of safety and support for entire families.

NDLON improves the lives of day laborers in the United States. To this end, NDLON works to unify and strengthen its member organizations to be more strategic and effective in their efforts to develop leadership, mobilize, and organize day laborers in order to protect and expand their civil, labor and human rights. NDLON fosters safer, more humane environments for day laborers, both men and women, to earn a living, contribute to society, and integrate into the community.

Equality for Flatbush is a people of color-led, multi-national grassroots organization which does anti-police repression, affordable housing and anti- gentrification organizing in the Flatbush and East Flatbush communities of Brooklyn, NY

BAJI educates and engages African American and black immigrant communities to organize and advocate for racial, social and economic justice. Local BAJI Organizing Committees in New York, Georgia, California and Arizona build coalitions and initiate campaigns among communities to push for racial justice. At the local and regional level, BAJI provides training and technical assistance to partner organizations to develop leadership skills, works with faith communities to harness their prophetic voice, and initiates vibrant dialogues with African Americans and black immigrants to discover more about race, our diverse identities, racism, migration and globalization. BAJI’s flagship project is the Black Immigration Network (BIN), a national alliance that brings together black-led organizations and programs to advance just immigration policies and promote cultural shifts our communities need. The BIN kinship provides a safe, communal space for diverse black communities to connect, engage and advocate for equality and justice for all.