A Year in Review - 2020

We’re back with the next segment of the 10-year campaign! This month, we highlight 2020, a challenging year for Beyond and the world. We owe an immense amount of gratitude to our community partners for navigating this period with us and also our supporters for giving us the opportunity to do so. We would be honored to have your incredible support once again for our 10-year anniversary campaign to help us celebrate such a momentous milestone!

The COVID-19 pandemic altered Beyond’s day-to-day work: from our internal operations to external collaborations with our community partners, and even court and other case proceedings. However, through these hardships came rewarding successes.

Click to hear more from Beyond’s Community Empowerment Supervisor, Saul Brand Padilla, on the internal and external changes that the pandemic created and how we met them.

One of our most powerful successes from 2020 was with a community member named Beto. In May of 2019, Beto was arrested and turned over to ICE custody, despite his charges being dropped. Beyond Legal Aid and Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD) deployed a participatory defense strategy in an attempt to secure his freedom. Participatory defense is a growing community defense technique that mobilizes communities to be actively involved in the pursuit of a community member’s liberation, combining aggressive litigation with relentless community organizing.

Despite being a DACA recipient with a pending application for status renewal, Beto was still detained by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) who refused to consider his renewal. In December 2019, Beto, OCAD, and Beyond filed two federal lawsuits challenging Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) illegal deprivation of Beto’s rights under the DACA program and his prolonged detention without release on bond. After being detained for 9 months, an immigration judge finally granted bond to Beto in 2020.

Unjustly, his release was short-lived.

Within 48 hours of a check-in with ICE later that summer, Beto was detained and deported. Beyond and OCAD sprang into action. Fusing our expertise and resources together with OCAD, we delivered a win for Beto and his goals. In 2021, he reentered the US on humanitarian parole.

Beto’s case demonstrates how Beyond’s model challenges and outperforms conventional means of obtaining justice by fusing the expertise and networks of attorneys, organizers, and impacted communities.

Community Members and Partners protesting in support of Beto’s release.

Keep an eye out for 2021’s highlight, another monumental year in Beyond’s history, coming next month! Be sure to also compare each month’s “Year in Review” graphic (below) to see how much our growth over the years.

10 years of success would be impossible without supporters like you, and we hope that you will consider donating to the campaign as we continue our work with community members like Beto.