I Was an Asylum Seeker. Now I Help Others: A Podcast with Dora Rodriguez

“My story was tragic and painful. It took me years to open up. But I have a story that I hope can make some change, and let people know who we migrants really are.”

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October 25, 2022
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I Was an Asylum Seeker. Now I Help Others: A Podcast with Dora Rodriguez
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Dora Rodriguez was once an asylum seeker. She escaped the death squads in El Salvador in the 1980s during the U.S.-backed civil war. On her journey to the United States, her group was abandoned in the Sonoran Desert south of Tucson, Arizona. Thirteen people traveling with her died, and Rodriguez barely survived.

Since then, she’s devoted her life to social work and to helping migrants in the Sonoran Desert where she nearly perished. In this podcast, Rodriguez talks about the migrant resource center called Casa de la Esperanza which she helped open last year in the Mexican border community of Sásabe, Sonora. She talks about her own history, her nonprofit Salvavision, and the current situation at the border with Title 42 and other policies endangering asylum seekers’ lives. And she talks about how humanitarian work, which can take a physical and emotional toll, sustains her year after year. “There are some days that are painful,” she said. “There are tears. What keeps me going is to see the people behind me doing this work, and I know I’m not alone.”

Author
Melissa del Bosque

Melissa del Bosque is Co-founder and Executive Director of The Border Chronicle. Melissa has written about the U.S.-Mexico border since 1998 for various media outlets, including ProPublica, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Texas Observer, and The Intercept.

Her work has been recognized with numerous U.S. and international journalism awards, including a Gabo Award and the Internacional Rey de España de Periodismo award, as the U.S.-Mexico investigations editor for Lighthouse Reports. In 2020, del Bosque received the RFK Human Rights Journalism Award as part of a ProPublica group reporting project “Inside the Border Patrol.” In 2016, she received the Hillman Prize for her investigative feature “Death on Sevenmile Road” about the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2015, del Bosque’s four-part series with The Guardian on migrant deaths in South Texas won an Emmy and a National Magazine Award. 

Del Bosque is also the author of Bloodlines: The True Story of a Drug Cartel, the FBI and the Battle for a Horse-Racing Dynasty. She has a Master’s in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin, a Master’s in Public Health from the Texas A&M School of Rural Public Health, and a Bachelor’s in poetry and Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.

In her spare time, Melissa loves to travel, spend time with her family, and explore the Sonoran Desert.

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