SideBar on the Legal Talk Network Welcomes Erica Pinheiro of Al Otro Lado

Destigmatizing deportation and creating spaces where deportees, returnees, and families can share their stories and transform their shame into empowerment.

MONTEREY/SANTA BARBARA, CA, UNITED STATES, May 19, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- SideBar podcast on The Legal Talk Network welcomes Erica Pinheiro, Executive Director of Al Otro Lado. Her topic for the episode published Tuesday morning, May 20, 2025 is “Protecting and Providing Due Process”. Pinheiro serves as the Executive Director of Al Otro Lado providing holistic legal and humanitarian support to refugees, deportees, and other migrants in the US and Tijuana through a multidisciplinary, client-centered, harm reduction-based practice. The organization provides direct, free, legal services on both sides of the US-Mexico border and beyond through zealous individual representation, medical-legal partnerships, and impact litigation to protect the rights of immigrants and asylum-seekers.

Cohost Jackie Gardina noted that "Erica and Al Otro Lado provide a wide range of social services, know your rights workshops, creative workshops, and legal clinics. They work to destigmatize deportation and create spaces where deportees, returnees, and their families can share their stories and transform their shame into empowerment.”

Al Otro Lado is the primary nonprofit organization representing parents who were separated from their children before and during “Zero Tolerance” and deported without them. Al Otro Lado staff and volunteers have traveled extensively throughout Central America and Mexico to meet with separated parents and work to reunify them with their children. Al Otro Lado has reunified over 35 deported parents with their children in the United States, and is currently working to reunify dozens more. Al Otro Lado monitors continued family separations at the US-Mexico border and engages media, researchers, elected officials, litigators, and other advocates to bring continued family separations to the public eye and advocate for policy changes that would end separation at the border.

Cohost Mitch Winick pointed out that, “Erica shares both her personal experience with immigration enforcement at the border as well as the many examples of fear and uncertainty being created for individuals and families trying to legally gain entry and asylum in the United States. Pinheiro's work on behalf of unaccompanied children, refugee families, and vulnerable detained migrants is frequently featured in national and international media outlets. She also provides on-the-ground context regarding US border policies to policy-makers, including state Attorneys General, members of the US Congress, and California elected officials. She has also provided technical assistance and numerous trainings regarding immigration law and policy to attorneys, the California State Bar, Federal Public Defender offices, and Los Angeles County agencies.

Pinheiro holds both a JD and MPP from Georgetown University and is trained in econometric analysis of immigration policy. Her thesis analyzed the intersection between immigration enforcement by local police and crime.

To listen to Erica Pinheiro’s SideBar season three episode with law deans Jackie Gardina and Mitch Winick, hear previous episodes, read our blog, learn about future guests, and to contact the co-hosts with ideas, comments, or questions, go to www.sidebarmedia.org

Mitchel L Winick
MONTEREY COLLEGE OF LAW
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