Isabel Sousa-Rodriguez
Template:TOCnestleft Isabel Sousa-Rodriguez was born in Bogota, Colombia and moved to Miami with her family at the age of 6. She joined the Florida Immigrant Coalition coming out of high school as a youth leader, organizing against deportations and for the DREAM Act since 2007 and has had various roles at FLIC since 2008, especially working with immigrant youth statewide and with farm worker organizations throughout central Florida.
In 2010, Isabel was one of the founders of the national Trail of Dreams mobilization where she walked with other students and families 1,500 miles from Miami to D.C. drawing national attention to the need to end deportations and reform our nation’s broken immigration system.
Isabel Sousa-Rodriguez has an Associate degree in Business Administration from Miami Dade College and a Bachelor’s in Sociology from the University of South Florida. As a graduate student at the City University of New York, Isabel also published academic articles detailing the effects of legal status and marginalization on undocumented mothers, their families, as well as adolescents in the transition to adulthood.
From 2015 through 2016, she was the state coordinator of New York’s Mexican Initiative on Deferred Action. She also served on the national selection committee of the DREAM.US Undocumented Youth Scholarship Fund from 2013-2015 and is currently on the Board of United for a Fair Economy.[1]
FLIC
In 2017 Isabel Sousa-Rodriguez, was Lead Organizer and Membership Director for the Florida Immigrant Coalition.
FLIC and allies
Florida Immigrant Coalition April 21 2018:
Powerful experience and powerful connections with members and guests from Farmworker Association of Florida, YAYA - National Farm Worker Ministry, Florida Student Power Network, QLatinx, UNITE HERE Central Florida, Central Florida AFL- CIO, We Are All America, Organize Florida, FL HeretoStay, SEIU Florida, WeCount, Coqui Language Collective, Palm Beach County Coalition for Immigrant Rights, Miami Workers Center, Florida KIDS COUNT and more! — with Aashutosh Pyakuryal, Curtis Hierro, Tomas Kennedy, Isabel Sousa-Rodriguez, Mike Thom, Mike V. Cocco, Denise Diaz and Tessa Petit in Apopka, Florida.
FLIC rally in Orlando
With DACA recipients pleading, sometimes in tears, for the right to stay in the United States where they grew up, a coalition of pro-immigration groups and Democratic lawmakers gathered on Orlando City Hall’s front steps September 2017 to denounce President Donald Trump‘s phased-out repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
At the same time, the groups and the young, undocumented immigrants called for the widespread immigration reform that Trump demanded Congress pursue with the end of DACA in sight.
They reacted to Attorney General Jeff Sessions‘ announcement that the White House was ending enrollments in DACA immediately and those currently enrolled would have six months, with the challenge that Congress would pass immigration reform in that period.
While Sessions and Trump essentially set the table for full immigration reform, those gathered in Orlando offered no trust offered for them or their intentions.
“Since the administration came into office, the immigration rhetoric has been hateful. It has been divisive. And we don’t stand for it,” said Isabel Sousa-Rodriguez, lead organizer and membership coordinator for the Florida Immigrant Coalition.
The gathering at Orlando City Hall, organized by the Florida Immigrant Coalition, included scores of representatives of immigration groups, labor unions, Hispanic groups, CAIR - Florida, progressive groups, and Democratic state Sens. Victor Torres and Linda Stewart of Orlando, state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith of Orlando, and a representative of U.S. Rep. Darren Soto.[2]
Tampa Bay SDS
Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society public Facebook group funtioned from circa 2010 to 2015. Members included Isabel Sousa-Rodriguez.