Just Conversations | This Moment in Immigration: What’s at Stake and What Can Be Done
About Just Conversations
Just Conversations is a series co-presented by the Center for Brooklyn History and Brooklyn Org that brings into dialogue issues facing our borough, city, and society and gives voice to the change makers who move us towards a more equitable future.
This program is co-presented with Documented, the second in a two-part series about immigration. Watch a recording of the first program here.
Across the country, migrants and refugees are living in fear as the nation confronts a pivotal moment in our history. Sweeping state-level restrictions along with drastic changes in national policies around asylum access, deportations, ICE raids, and detentions, have both intensified the debate over who is welcome in America and under what terms, and created unbearable circumstances for the millions living in the United States who must ask themselves on a daily basis - when I leave my home, will I return?
Join four leading voices on the frontlines of immigration advocacy, policy, journalism, and humanitarian response. Omar Jadwat, Director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, has led landmark litigation to defend immigrant rights nationwide; Hans Van de Weerd, Senior Vice President for Resettlement, Asylum & Integration at the International Rescue Committee, oversees programs supporting refugees and asylum seekers in the U.S. and Europe; Murad Awawdeh, President & CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, brings decades of grassroots organizing and policy leadership; and Ethar El-Katatney, Editor-in-Chief of Documented, works to deliver essential news and information to immigrant communities.
Together, they will explore the state of U.S. immigration today, dispel common myths, and engage in an urgent conversation about the people, principles, and possibilities at the heart of the immigration debate. At this time of great uncertainty, when actions around immigration raise existential questions about American democracy itself, these experts help to clarify our new reality and outline what can be done to protect the rights and futures of our immigrant neighbors.
Participants
Murad Awawdeh is a strategist, organizer, and advocacy expert currently serving as the President and CEO at the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC). The son of Palestinian immigrants, Murad has dedicated over two decades of his life fighting for low-income communities of color across the State of New York. He grew up organizing to stop dangerous and hazardous developments in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and engaging community residents to build power and bring transformational change to their neighborhoods. As the NYIC's Executive Vice President of Advocacy & Strategy he successfully led electoral, legislative, and policy campaigns at the federal, state and local levels, and mobilized hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers at demonstrations against anti-immigrant policies. As the Executive Vice President of NYIC Action, the NYIC’s sister 501(c)4 political advocacy and action organization, he has successfully led grassroots electoral campaigns to elect progressive candidates. Murad has been featured in VICE and the Huffington Post and was honored with a U.S Congressional Recognition, and Public Service Awards from the NYS Senate and Assembly. He serves as a Trustee of the New York University Family Health Centers Board, as a member of the Justice 2020 Committee, and as Commissioner of the New York City Civic Engagement Commission.
Ethar El-Katatney is Editor-in-Chief of Documented where she brings extensive news product experience to elevate the organization’s growing range of products aimed at serving immigrant communities with news and information. Most recently, at Bloomberg, Ethar served as News Product Strategy Lead for the Americas. Previously, she was the former Young Audiences Editor at the Wall Street Journal and the executive producer overseeing the AJ+ newsroom, the digital video arm of Al-Jazeera she helped pilot, launch and lead. Ethar has received a CNN African Journalist of the Year Award, a Samir Kassir Freedom of the Press Award, and an Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Journalist Award. She is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at The Brown Institute for Media Innovation, and sits on the board of the Online News Association.
Omar Jadwat is the director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, which he joined as a Skadden Fellow in 2002. The ACLU has fought for immigrants’ rights since its founding in 1920, and formally established the Immigrants’ Rights Project in 1987. The Project’s long list of groundbreaking cases includes litigation successfully establishing limits on immigration detention, preserving judicial review and other key due process rights, preventing state and local police from taking immigration enforcement into their own hands, and ending the first Trump administration’s family separation policy.
IRP’s current litigation docket challenges, among other things: an executive order that attempts to strip American-born children of citizenship; an unprecedented peacetime invocation of the Alien Enemies Act in order to deport people without due process; the arrest, detention, and attempted deportation of students and scholars based on their political beliefs and advocacy; policies shutting down access to asylum at the border; and anti-immigrant laws enacted by the states of Florida, Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Idaho.
Omar graduated from NYU Law School and was a law clerk for Judge John G. Koeltl of the Southern District of New York. He is also an adjunct professor at NYU Law.
Hans Van de Weerd is the Senior Vice President for Resettlement, Asylum & Integration (RAI) at the International Rescue Committee (IRC). RAI creates opportunities for refugees and other vulnerable migrants to survive and thrive in the United States and in Europe, serving over 668K clients across the network in FY23, including clients served via direct services and information services. Prior to his current role, Hans was the Executive Director of the IRC’s office in Northern California. Before joining the IRC in 2012, Hans was a General Director for Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF)/Doctors without Borders, where his work included leading a campaign for access to essential medicines and directing country programs in India and Iraq. He began his career in the humanitarian field in 2002 at ZOA Refugee Care, where he was Program Director for Afghanistan.
Hans built his leadership, management and motivational skills with a decade of experience in global finance and logistics, working for multinational companies in China and Shanghai. Currently based in New York City, he is a native of the Netherlands. He holds a Master of Science in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a Master of Science in European Studies from the University of Amsterdam.
