In honor of the 2017 Hispanic Heritage Month celebration, this year the Federal Public Defender’s Office for the Central District of California was joined by prominent labor and immigration advocate Eliseo Medina. Mr. Medina arrived to the United States as a child with his family in the 1950s under the Bracero Program. As a teenager, he worked alongside civil rights giant Cesar Chavez organizing farm workers. He later went on to work for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), becoming the first Mexican-American elected to one of the union’s international offices. Since his retirement, Mr. Medina has turned his attention to immigration reform and issues of Latino civic engagement, such as voting. The Q&A discussion, moderated by Supervising Deputy Federal Public Defender Raul Ayala, covered issues of the Latino immigrant experience in the United States over the last 60 years dating back to the Bracero program, how the experience has been informed by labor and immigration issues since then, and what the next chapters are for the Latino immigrant story.

Please take the time to view our photo gallery of the event.