Our Mission
Santa Fe Dreamers Project upholds the dignity and rights of immigrants to pursue their goals and dreams by offering high-quality legal services and representation. We partner with the immigrant community and supporters to transform the immigration system through advocacy and education.
Our Vision
We boldly envision a future where dignity, justice, and equity are the foundations of a transformed immigration experience.
Our Values
Dignity: We believe in the fundamental dignity of human beings. The immigration legal system is intentionally designed to dehumanize people. Ultimately, immigration is not about categories, criteria, or statistics - it's about real people living their lives. Treating clients with dignity and honoring their self-determination is the foundation of our organization. A just, equitable, and transformed immigration system is one that protects and respects human dignity.
Abolition: Immigration detention is fundamentally unjust and inhumane, and must be abolished. The U.S. legal framework categorizes immigration matters as civil law and considers deportation and detention to be administrative functions rather than punishments. In reality, immigrants subjected to this carceral system are subjected to the same harmful, abusive structures that exist in the criminal justice context, such as violent arrests, strip searches, solitary confinement, and worse. These abuses are perpetual and immigrants are not afforded due process rights and constitutional protections like a right to counsel, rules of evidence and procedure, and constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishments. For these reasons, Santa Fe Dreamers Project is an abolitionist organization opposed to the detention of immigrants.
Racial and Gender Justice: The systemic harms that are endemic in the immigration legal system have their roots in the larger issues of racism and misogyny. As part of the immigrant justice movement, Santa Fe Dreamers Project’s work is intrinsically connected to the larger movements for racial justice and gender justice. Immigrants are not a monolith and often experience multiple, overlapping sources of oppression, including gender-based violence. Our intersectional approach to legal advocacy honors the diverse experiences of our clients and fellow community members.
Equity: As an antiracist organization, we hold equity as a foundational value. Immigrants deserve equitable access to opportunity. America's immigration system has been unjust since its inception and needs to be changed to remove harmful systemic barriers to be able to respond to the needs of each immigrant.
Liberation: All of our values are tools we use to work towards liberation, which we define as personal autonomy and the acknowledgment of our collective humanity. In our legal work, we advocate for economic freedom, freedom of movement, and freedom from immigration detention. In our policy advocacy work and in our community partnerships, we strive to make our community a place where all individuals are liberated from the oppression and cruelty of our broken immigration legal system. In our commitment to collective liberation, we work to avoid, question, challenge and dismantle oppression, degradation, hierarchy, and supremacy wherever we find it. Ultimately, we believe that none of us can be free until we are all free.
