Career Retrospective: The UndocuBlack Network
I’ll be blunt: my first career pivot felt…painful. As I began my transition from private practice into the public interest space, I stared at my resume with my DOJ and law firm jobs laid out. I agonized over every detail. What had I done with my time? What was my transferable skill set? Did my on-paper career reflect my ideological commitment to the issues I cared about? Did that even matter? How could I persuade public interest employers to take a chance on me? I couldn’t see or hear past my own negative self-talk, which made me downplay my experiences. My husband, who I considered to be a public interest veteran, threw a ladder down into the deep mental hole I had dug for myself. With his help, I climbed out of the hole and gingerly put myself on the job market.
I am not a believer in coincidences or serendipity. But when The UndocuBlack Network (UBN) called me about a job opportunity—and said they believed in me and wanted to work with me—I could scarcely wrap my head around it. I learned about UBN in law school in 2016 (the year of its founding), as I was discovering, studying, and writing about the small-but-mighty world of Black immigration advocacy. I followed UBN’s work in the years following my law school graduation, supporting however I could—whether it was volunteering to arrange logistics for a Hill lobby day, or trying to aggressively fundraise at my law firm. I joined the organization in a role that did not exist before: Policy and Community Advocacy Counsel.
Working at UBN was the most transformative experience of my career. I grew exponentially, in what seemed like every way possible. The sheer dynamism that the work required of me was daunting but thrilling—whereas I struggled to pivot before, I had to get comfortable with pivoting on a daily basis. Perhaps the most freeing aspect of my time at UBN was the organization’s commitment to naming things just as they are: anti-Blackness, racism, White supremacy, xenophobia, neoliberalism, and more. UBN is committed to serving Black immigrants, who live at the crossroads of anti-Blackness and anti-immigrant sentiment. I could not only bring my authentic, whole, daughter-of-Jamaican-immigrants self to work, but I was expected to bring that perspective into every room I entered, regardless of the audience.
In my time at UBN, I wore a dizzying number of hats. I worked with the Narrative & Media team closely, helping to draft statements, tweets, and social media captions, and develop partner toolkits to amplify UBN’s work. I created my first policy explainer TikTok, translating arcane legal concepts into accessible language for community members. I regularly took interviews with written publications, podcasts, and even television—always representing the Black immigrant perspective. I co-hosted policy advocacy workshops for our community, in the firm belief that people who are directly impacted should be considered experts and advocates who can fully participate in policy advocacy at every level. I helped to grow the Policy & Advocacy team, designing and leading the hiring and onboarding process for a Policy Analyst position. In my role, I truly enjoyed feeling like the “Chief Explainer in Residence,” helping the national team and UBN’s membership understand and process the latest immigration news coming out of Congress and agencies like DHS, USCIS, and ICE. I led the organization’s Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness (LRIF) Campaign, an all-encompassing effort involving:
Scheduling and leading stakeholder engagements with USCIS at the Director level
Providing input on the design and content of UBN’s LRIF landing page
Sourcing and creating a LRIF pro bono legal directory
Drafting accessible How-To Guides for applicants without legal representation
Providing in-depth analyses of LRIF USCIS Policy Manual content
Sourcing and tracking LRIF application data via FOIA requests, USCIS data, and the Congressional Research Service resources
Leading the inter-organizational LRIF Strategy Group, convening regularly to share practitioner observations of the LRIF application process
Conducting strategic outreach on the Hill on LRIF implementation issues faced by Liberian constituents and providing feedback on legislative text to extend or codify the program
I am proud to say our joint efforts led to multiple updates and corrections to the USCIS Policy Manual, which USCIS officers used to adjudicate LRIFe applications, and an uptick in national and local engagements with the public on LRIF.
My time at UBN also coincided with the September 2021 crisis in Del Rio, Texas, where Haitian and African asylum seekers were publicly brutalized by CBP officers on horseback. I participated in intensive rapid response strategy and advocacy work, including attending stakeholder engagements with DHS, CBP, and ICE and the filing of FOIA and public records requests that would support litigation in the years following the horrifying incidents at the border.
In my time at UBN, I worked with partners at some of the most inspiring and exciting Black immigrant organizations out there, like Haitian Bridge Alliance, African Communities Together, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, the African Bureau for Immigration and Social Affairs, the Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project, and more.
It bears repeating: working at UBN was the most transformative experience of my career. This blog post barely scratches the surface of the breadth of my experiences during my time at UBN, and my gratitude for the many lessons learned. But these remain my two key takeaways: out of necessity and due to the nature of the work, I grew my arsenal of advocacy skills beyond what I ever could have imagined, and I learned how to bet on my Black immigrant community and myself every single day.
