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Arnoldo García is Program Director of the Immigrant Justice & Rights Program at the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and heads up HURRICANE: The Human Rights Immigrant Community Action Network. Arnoldo edits Network News, NNIRR’s newsmagazine, and represents NNIRR on the regional coordinators committee of the “Liberty & Justice for All Campaign” with the Washington, D.C.-based Rights Working Group.

In 2006 Arnoldo launched a national community dialogue on ending militarization and State violence in border control and immigration enforcement.  In 2007, Arnoldo was presented with the “Cesar E. Chavez Leadership Achievement Award,” recognizing his lifelong commitment to community organizing and defense of rights. His essay on the significance of the massive 2006 immigrant community mobilizations, “Immigrant Rights and Power: Transforming Social Justice, Dreaming A Different World,” was published by the Southern California Library for Social Research journal. In 2003, he edited the organizational report Human Rights & Human Security at Risk: The Consequences of Placing Immigration Enforcement and Services in the Department of Homeland Security and in 2008 he edited Over-Raided, Under-Siege: U.S. Immigration Laws and Enforcement Destroy the Rights of Immigrants.

Arnoldo is also a long-time cultural worker and musician; his work appears in XicKorea – poems rants words together (California, 2003), Chokecherries (New Mexico, 2005) and Hurricane Katrina: Response and Responsibilities (New Pacific Press, 2005).

Catherine Tactaquin is Executive Director and a co-founder of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Her commitment to immigrant rights was initially motivated by her own experience as the U.S.-born daughter of an immigrant farmworker from the Philippines. Before joining the National Network, she was involved for many years in grassroots organizing and advocacy in the Filipino community on issues of discrimination and foreign policy.

Catherine helped to found Migrant Rights International in 1994, and is a member of its Steering Committee.  She is presently a member of the board of Poverty, Race and Research Action Council in Washington, D.C., and the Advisory Board of the Alston-Bannerman Fellowship Program.  She is a former recipient of the Bannerman Fellowship, an award recognizing outstanding activists of color.

Colin Rajah is Program Director of the International Migrant Rights and Global Justice Program at NNIRR. A political refugee from Malaysia, Colin has been an activist-organizer for almost 25 years around Asia and in the U.S. He has authored dozens of publications, and speaks frequently around the world on issues related to migration and migrant rights, and international trade and globalization. Colin also co-leads an international advocacy project on climate change and migration. He is currently authoring a report on the criminalization and exploitation of migrant labor through international trade and development, managed migration, and repressive enforcement policies.

Colin serves as the Secretary and a Steering Committee member for Migrant Rights International (MRI), an international federation of migrant rights organizations. Over the past five years, he has co-chaired an International Working Group which organizes civil society movements and events responding to governmental summits on migration, especially the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD). Colin was also a member of the International Advisory Committee for the 2009 GFMD Civil Society Days.

Colin served as a National Planning Committee member of the U.S. Social Forum (USSF), and is currently a Steering Committee member of the Grassroots Global Justice (GGJ) Alliance. In addition to being a Fellow at the Oakland Institute, Colin has served as a consultant to the Malaysian Migration Working Group (MWG), the Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP), Asia-Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), Urban Habitat and other community organizations in Asia and around the U.S.

Laura Rivas is a researcher and coordinator for NNIRR’s “100 Stories” Project documenting human rights abuses of immigrants. Raised in Southern California, she attended Loyola Marymount University and recently completed a Master of Arts in Cultural Anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco. Her academic work has centered on critical explorations of the nation-state, processes of citizen-subject formation, and the historical constructions of race, class, gender, and sexuality.

Laura has also worked in a number of communities to advocate, and coordinate academic support, for low income students and parents. She is currently helping to plan the emerging Transcultural Education Project with colleagues from CIIS. Laura has also practiced Aztec Dance for ten years.