The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 22

GOING ALL IN TO HELP ASYLUM SEEKERS
AT THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER continued
appreciation for my help. Each person
will need to find the techniques that
work best. Some techniques work
better in person, others work better
remotely. For example, pausing to
collect your thoughts is visually evident
when interpreting in person, but over
the phone without video, those on
the other end will begin to wonder if
the connection has been lost. In these
situations, I find that gently clearing my
throat works better.
There are many opportunities to
serve as a pro bono interpreter, near
or far, with or without video, through
your cell phone, or on Whatsapp, a
cross-platform messaging and voiceover
online service. Every organization has a
method to connect with an interpreter.
Generally speaking, Zoom-like software
won't be used since your client won't
have access to more than a detention
center phone line or a simple Wi-Fi
connection. Especially now, during the
adaptations required for COVID-19,
most interpreting is done remotely.
Typically, the organization will have a
prearranged time and date for a threeway call that will allow you, other
professionals, and the asylum seeker to
have a discussion. These calls can last
from one to three hours.

WHAT ABOUT THE LEGAL ASPECT?
As I mentioned previously, I was
cautious about giving my time to this
cause because I had a limited legal
vocabulary. Yet, to my surprise, there
was no need for an extensive legal
vocabulary for this type of interpreting.
To be clear, I'm not referring to court
interpreting or even official asylum
officer interviews, but rather all of the
groundwork that happens before and
after official court appearances.
For example, lawyers, psychologists,
social workers, and legal advocates
need to speak to their clients several
times before and after the Credible Fear
Interview.9 This interview constitutes
the most important moment in the
asylum process. The asylum seeker will
be interviewed by an asylum officer
to find out whether they qualify for
asylum by demonstrating that they
need asylum to escape persecution or
22

The ATA Chronicle | July/August 2020

torture in their home country. Passing
this interview is the first step toward
gaining freedom from detention. Still,
unbelievably, an asylum seeker may
pass the Credible Fear Interview but
not be allowed out of detention. In
these cases, if the asylum seeker is
lucky enough to have legal assistance,
the attorney will try to get bond or
humanitarian release for their client. In
these cases, an interpreter will be called
in to facilitate communication before
the bond hearing.

Many medical interpreters deal
with traumatic situations in their
work, so they already have the
necessary experience and tools to
handle intense experiences.

During the interview process,
certain words and phrases will come
up repeatedly, such as persecution,
targeted, court date, appeal, asylum,
bond, police report, sponsor, flight risk,
and detention. However, the majority
of your time interpreting will be spent
listening carefully to the microdetails of
life events, clarifying the approximate
time and the order in which things
happened, as well as the responses
and consequences of each event. The
required vocabulary is much more
somber: rape, assault, beatings, torture,
threats, extorsion, gangs, and kidnapping.
Skilled interviewers ask about the first,
worst, and last thing that happened
before an individual decided to flee
their country. Difficult, probing
questions are required to develop a
legal strategy for filing for asylum. For
example, when interviewing someone
who was raped, the questioning will
probably go something like this: "After
the rape, did you go to the police or the
doctor?" "Was there bruising, bleeding,
or discharge in your pelvic area?"
"What did the men say while they
were raping you?"

While I would hate to discount
the difficulty and sensitivity of these
conversations, I would be remiss not to
emphasize how wonderfully fulfilling
the process can be. I've never felt so
appreciated and respected as I have
at the end of one of these sessions.
Invariably, when it's time to say
goodbye, the asylum seeker expresses
deep gratitude, not only for the legal
services, but more importantly for
the chance to tell their story to an
empathetic listener. Whether or not the
desired legal results are achieved, the
human and humane interaction serves
a therapeutic role. I don't say this to
express a personal opinion, but rather as
a transmission of what asylum seekers
have told me time and time again.

TRANSLATORS ALSO WANTED
It's not just interpreting skills that
are needed at the border. Volunteer
translators are also in high demand.
Each client is often armed with a stack
of documentation for their case, all
of which needs to be translated and
certified. These documents range
from national identification cards,
birth certificates, school records,
political party membership letters,
death certificates, sworn statements,
police reports, and even Facebook
messages. For translators with limited
experience with legal documents like
birth certificates, rest assured that many
of the advocate groups have a stockpile
of rubrics and templates to help you
through the process.
Some of this content will not take
an emotional toll. Birth certificates,
school reports, identification cards, and
documents like these will only cause
the kind of stress that comes from
the irritations of formatting columns
and rows. However, documents like
police reports, newspaper articles,
sworn statements, and doctors' reports
documenting the physical evidence of
abuse, torture, and the like, sometimes
paired with photographic evidence,
will require steady nerves. (One of
most horrific documents I translated
consisted of several testimonial accounts
of human rights abuses of Nicaraguan
political prisoners.) Here, those with
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