HAYWARD — Before she became an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, the Rev. Maria Cristina Vlassidis Burgoa can still remember her family’s diaspora from Chile to the United States, where they sought refuge from military junta leader Augusto Pinochet and his regime following the 1973 coup d’etat that elevated him to power.
These days, the Starr King Unitarian Universalist Church leader is not afraid to say that she is an immigrant and refugee in the same country that backed Pinochet’s overthrow of then Chilean president Salvador Allende.
“I was that child who was not able to use my true name for years,” the ordained minister said at Monday press conference at Alameda County Supervisor Richard Valle’s office in Hayward.
“I was that child not welcomed in my school, not speaking the language and afraid that I would be separated from my family and be deported. I came to this country escaping from the horrors of a military dictatorship and escaping torture, persecution and the disappearances that happened to many of my family members in Chile after 1973,” Vlassidis Burgoa said as she fought back tears.
She is one of the nearly two dozen elected leaders, nonprofit organizations, immigrant advocacy groups and religious leaders, who are backing an Alameda County measure to set aside $750,000 in funds to match a grant from The San Francisco Foundation to defend and protect immigrants and refugees in Alameda County.
The county Board of Supervisors will take up the funding measure Tuesday.
That proposal dates back to December, when county supervisors voted to create a committee on immigrant rights dedicated to “work on ways in which Alameda County can support its immigrant and refugee communities,” according to a December supervisors memo.
The San Francisco Foundation offered the $750,000 grant later that month to “help support the creation and development of an Alameda County wide rapid response network to provide legal and support services to Alameda County families facing the immediate threat of separation due to detention and deportation,” Alameda County Supervisor Wilma Chan wrote in a Dec. 14 memo to other supervisors.
The Partnership for Immigration Rights of Alameda County submitted a proposal around the same time to provide “legal services, rapid response coordination, community responders and know-your-rights education,” the Dec. 14 memo read.
The county’s pending decision comes on the heels of several executive orders issued by President Donald Trump since his Jan. 20 inauguration, including a Department of Homeland Security directive to hire 5,000 more border patrol agents and set aside available resources to start constructing a physical wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.
Another ordered that sanctuary cities, along with other jurisdictions that do not comply with federal immigration laws, not receive federal funds, except for law enforcement purposes, said Aidin Castillo, an immigration staff attorney at Centro Legal de la Raza in Oakland.
Contact Darin Moriki at 510-293-2480 or follow him at Twitter.com/darinmoriki.
