“I wasn’t recruited at a college fair,” says Isa Noyola (she / her), a trailblazing activist fighting for immigrant and LGBTQ rights as the deputy director of Mijente. (“The J is for justice.”) Isa’s career in advocacy didn’t start with a pamphlet in the quad, but developed “through loss, pain, and deep suffering of the communities being murdered, and no one caring,” she says.

We called the 43-year-old to learn what sparked her mission to build a safer society, the biggest issue facing trans Latinas today, and how we can all help.

Warning: Parts of this feature discuss potentially triggering topics, so please skip question 2 if you’re sensitive to the mention of abuse or assault.

If you’re at a party and someone asks, “What do you do?,” what’s your response?
It depends on the event. I am a jack of all trades, so I play a lot of different roles in the movement, whether it’s advocacy around immigration and ending trans detention, organizing communities for protests and rallies, [or] doing political-education workshops and trainings for Black, brown, [and] queer communities. I’m also supporting the vision of Mijente and our staff [as we] build an infrastructure for our organization.

Usually activists have an “aha” moment that draws them to their work. What was yours?
It was very personal. I started to volunteer at an HIV prevention organization in San Francisco straight out of college. One of the first students [I helped] was a trans Latina, Ruby Ordeñana, from Nicaragua. [She] came to this country with so many dreams and wanting to learn English—to just better her life overall. She was tragically, unjustly murdered, and her body was thrown in an abandoned warehouse area. It shook me to my core, understanding that this is how our communities end up in so many ways, and no one was doing anything at that time [to help]. Even in San Francisco, where you think it’s the gay mecca, I remember going to vigils and funerals, and it didn’t feel like it was enough. I was like, “This can’t end like this.”

What did you do?
I was able to channel some of that rage and sadness to answering the question of, “What does safety look like in our communities? What does safety look like for trans Latinas? What does safety look like for sex workers? What does safety look like for communities that have no resources?” That is where we started to build the work that [my former organization] El/La Para Translatinas does. So much of trans organizing revolved around HIV prevention, but there was nothing pinpointing the violence. We were one of the first organizations to really put that conversation on the map and speak with elected [city] officials, holding them accountable, [like] “What are you going to do besides just celebrating Pride?” [We got to] the point where it was then institutionalized in the city budget. For the first time ever, there were resources for violence-prevention strategies for trans people.

How does the intersection of your trans identity and Latinx identity affect your activism?
It’s everything. My family came across the border to build a better life. I’m eternally grateful for that, because they sacrificed so much. I grew up in a community where it was primarily undocumented folks, and I saw the generosity that exists in the community. The immigration work that I do, it’s not just high-level meetings with ICE or the Department of Homeland Security. It’s also about working with communities to make sure they are supported in their organizing and resourced appropriately so they can carry on the hard work.

What encouraged you to join Mijente?
As a trans Latina, there are very few of us in leadership positions, and then there are very few of us in non-LGBT organizations. [I’m] trying to show leadership that is intersectional, that is intentional, and brings in the whole community. I thought of my journey with transitioning and my journey in my relationship with my parents who are immigrants. They’ve had a difficult time understanding what trans means. I felt if I could think about what interventions I could make, or what kind of example I could be for communities that are not trans—for immigrant families, for cis mothers and fathers and uncles, and folks along the border [and] across the country that are Latinx—I wanted to be in that space. I might be their first time seeing a trans woman in a leadership position of a large organization, doing national work that is not just trans.

What’s the biggest issue facing the trans Latinx community today?
It continues to be immigration. It continues to be detention. It is absolutely mind-boggling to me that with this new administration, we’re still having to push so hard in advocating the ending of trans detention—especially because the majority of the cases of trans people coming to this country are [from those] fleeing violence and transphobia. For the US government’s response to be criminalization and denying basic human rights… [it’s] mind-blowing that we’ve accepted that as a society. Detention is a new phenomenon. It has not always been the default, and so the fact that it keeps growing—the budget of the Department of Homeland Security and ICE is in the billions every year—is ridiculous.

How can our readers help?
They should visit the End Trans Detention website. It spells out the issues; it has a petition. There is a policy demand on the table of the Department of Homeland Security right now with recommendations and instructions on how to end trans detention. We need readers to contact their elected officials, to apply pressure to their representatives, to Secretary Mayorkas from the Department of Homeland Security that, “Hey, you have the power to make this happen. It is not just an idea. It is not just a protest. It’s actual policy sitting on your table.” That would be a good start.

What do you love about being part of the Latinx community?
All the people. I’m humbled by all the communities I meet across this country. Seeing the organizing that happens in rural towns to large cities, and how people are doing it with little to no resources, right? Sometimes we make things so complicated, but when I see communities doing it on the ground, especially during the pandemic, they’re creating magic. They are communities that are targeted, over-policed, being murdered, and are still trying to find solutions. If that doesn’t inspire, if that doesn’t instill hope, I don’t know what [will]. It’s why I go so hard, because I see our communities doing that every day.