UCLA honors graduates active in undocumented community

An unfinished documentary outlined the experiences of one former UCLA student’s struggle to access higher education as an undocumented individual.

The film was shown in Campbell Hall Friday night to commemorate undocumented student advocates Cinthya Felix, the subject of the film, and Tam Tran, the film’s maker.

Tran was never able to finish the documentary, which was about Felix’s struggle as an undocumented student pursuing her graduate education in New York. Both women died in a car crash in 2010.

Friday evening’s ceremony was the first official vigil that UCLA’s Improving Dreams, Equality, Access and Success, or IDEAS, held in Tran’s and Felix’s honor, said Seth Ronquillo, current co-chair for IDEAS, and former columnist for the Daily Bruin.

During the ceremony, members of the audience, including close friends and faculty that mentored Tran and Felix, were invited to talk about their lives and work as activists for the undocumented student movement.

“We owe it to Tam and Cinthya to carry on their legacy by continuing this work of advocacy for undocumented student rights,” said Abel Valenzuela, chair of the César E. Chávez Chicana/o Studies department at UCLA.

The two women helped found IDEAS at UCLA in 2003 when they were undergraduate students, said Ronquillo, a fourth-year linguistics student. The two women were among the first undocumented students from UCLA to go to graduate school, said Susan Melgarejo, a fellow founder of IDEAS.

Felix spent the first 15 years of her life in Mexico, before moving to East Los Angeles. Tran was born in Germany after her family moved there to flee from the Vietnam War. Her family later moved to the United States when she was 6, Melgarejo said.

Felix was one of the first undocumented students to approach staff at UCLA about her unstable financial situation. She almost lost 30 percent of her financial aid because of her lack of documentation, Melgarejo said.

“We had to deal with staff at UCLA who had no idea how to deal with undocumented students,” Melgarejo said. “If you asked staff for info at the time, some would say, ‘Try community college.'”

Melgarejo said that’s when Felix and the rest of IDEAS’ founding members realized it was necessary to start an organization to support undocumented students.

During her time as an undergraduate, Melgarejo said Felix was very involved with high school students in her local community. She often returned from UCLA to help put on workshops on how to fill out college applications for them.

In 2009, a couple of years after graduating from UCLA, Felix was accepted into Columbia’s master’s program in public health. Around the same time, Melgarejo said she was working alongside Tran at an internship with Public Allies, a community service nonprofit affiliated with Americorps.

Tran, an aspiring filmmaker, was pursuing her own graduate education at Brown University at the time she died.

Dr. Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, the project director for UCLA’s Labor Center where Tran worked as an undergraduate, said the most important thing Tran and Felix taught the undocumented community was the power of telling personal stories.

“That strategy has meant so much for the immigration movement,” Rivera-Salgado said.

Tran’s first film, “The Seattle Underground Railroad,” was about the experiences of Felix and two UCLA colleagues attempting to get driver’s licenses for themselves and other undocumented students in Seattle.

In 2007, Tran also testified in front of the U.S. Congress about her situation as an undocumented student on behalf of the movement, Melgarejo said.

“They were both known for being brave enough to step into territory undocumented students had never entered before,” said Belinda Aguirre, a fourth-year Chicana/o studies student and external representative for IDEAS.

Now that the situation for undocumented students has improved in the years following Tran’s and Felix’s contributions, Aguirre said she thinks it is important to remember that the movement is not only a struggle for an equal playing field, but also for dignity and human rights as well.

At the end of the ceremony, attendees gathered in a large circle in front of Janss Steps to light candles, to say a prayer and to share a moment of silence for Tran and Felix.