Social Justice Education
Border enforcement and free-trade policies directly affect the lives of working people and immigrants. Researchers, advocates, and activists for human rights can find history and resources on this site.
Women and Globalization
Exploitation in global factories has led women workers to fight for fair wages and empower themselves through fair trade networks.
Reimagining the Border
With social critique and humor artists and activists reimagine human relationships along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Immigration and Detention
Women on the Border offers resources for the struggle to uphold the human rights of migrants and the undocumented.
Our History
Women on the Border was founded in 2001 to support the empowerment of women working in the NAFTA factories (maquiladoras) at the U.S.-Mexico border.
In recent years, as U.S. policy has become more hostile than ever to migrants, workers, and people of color, Women on the Border has sought to promote scholarship and activism calling for freedom, justice and human dignity.
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Elvia R. Arriola, Founder and Director
ELVIA ROSALES ARRIOLA is a Latina, feminist critical legal theorist. She has a JD from UC Berkeley and an MA in American History from NYU. She is a former ACLU Karpatkin Fellow (1983-84) and Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State...
Executive Director Sara Phalen
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR SARA PHALEN is based in West Chicago, Illinois. She first connected to Women on the Border in 2005 on an NIU law student delegation as part of a course on women and globalization designed by then director and professor Arriola. She became a Board...
COVID- 19 as a Threat to Immigrants in Detention
COVID-19 As a Threat to Immigrants In Detention In late March, 2020 an immigration jail detainee tested positive for the deadly Corona Virus (COVID-19) at a New Jersey jail. Shortly following this confirmed case the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of immigrants in...
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