Mizari Suárez leads Neighbors Immigration Clinic in Lexington.

Bluegrass, bourbon, horses, coal mines, and, of course, fried chicken. When people think of Kentucky, these are often the first things that come to mind. With an immigrant population of only 4%. Kentucky isn’t usually noted for its immigrant-rich communities.   

Mizari Suárez, executive director of Neighbors Immigration Clinic—our ILJ affiliate in Lexington, Kentucky—has spent most of her life working to dispel this outdated notion about her state.

“Don’t disregard Kentucky because we’re not Arizona or Texas,” she warns. “We have a large—a humongous—and growing community of immigrants here.”

Kentucky is, per capita, among the top states for refugee resettlement in the entire country, with refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, Myanmar (Burma), and Ukraine all finding a home here. More significantly, immigrants fleeing their home countries for safety or coming to Kentucky for work, education, and to join family members, are making valuable contributions to the workforce and the state’s economy.

As the immigrant population grows, the need for knowledgeable immigration counsel and representation grows, too. Neighbors Immigration Clinic opened its doors during the pandemic in a region with very few nonprofit immigration legal service providers. Unfortunately, this is still a woefully underserved region.

“We are the only nonprofit organization in our city—really, in our state—taking in new clients at the moment,” says Mizari. “We’re seeing people coming from as far as Eastern Kentucky in the Appalachian Mountains—that’s a four-hour drive just to be able to see an attorney.”

Legal Director Katie Taylor meets with 12 -15 clients each week. But they are a small office—with only Mizari and Katie on staff—and feel the squeeze of too much demand and too little capacity.

One of the challenges they face is the lack of competent and trained interpreters. It isn’t just Spanish interpreters they need; Mizari is working to find interpreters/translators in a total of six languages, including Arabic, Swahili, French, Haitian Creole, and Kinyarwanda, a Bantu language spoken mainly in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“We took the initiative of starting our own interpreter bank,” states Mizari. “I’m also working with our local university [University of Kentucky] and their language department to figure out a way to create an interpretation language training program. Hopefully, this collaboration will allow us to train interpreters in these languages and feel confident in the interpretation quality we are providing our clients.”  

Mizari’s ability to seek and find innovative ways to address needs in the immigrant community is one born from necessity and experience. Growing up undocumented, she learned firsthand the inequities facing her community when she began applying for college.

“I was accepted at the University of Louisville,” she remembers. “That was where I really wanted to go. But there was no way for me to pay for it. There were no scholarships available to undocumented students. So I made a tough decision and, instead, worked at a factory with my mom to save up for community college.”

As a student at the local community college, Mizari became active with United We Dream and the fight for DACA. She began working with local college administrators to educate them about how to support their undocumented students instead of treating them like foreign nationals.

Her involvement in the fight for DACA gave her the experience needed to lead efforts to oppose ICE and deportations in her city, and then to become a fierce advocate for immigrant housing.  

Mizari’s ability for organization and facilitation made her an ideal person to lead Neighbors Immigration Clinic. Her experiences also gave her a more comprehensive approach to immigration legal services.

“As a directly impacted person who was previously undocumented,” says Mizari, “I see that immigration status does not fix everything. It fixes one part, but it’s only one or two percent of an immigrant’s entire story. Hunger, food insecurity, housing, and the ability to feel empowered to articulate what they need—these are also components of our work, and it’s our responsibility to set the standard for how we care for immigrants in our city.”  

For Mizari, the use of the word “care” instead of the more familiar “serve” is very deliberate. She and her board members see a power dynamic inherent in the verb “to serve” that they wish to avoid.

“When we care, we are more connected to the individual, and we’ve made it personal,” Mizari explains. “We’ve leveled the playing field, we’re learning from each other and walking alongside together.

“Care is closer to love, and love,” she adds, paraphrasing Dr. Cornell West, “is what justice looks like in public.”

Thanks to the generosity of Board Member Juan Castro,  owner and founder of the JCC Consulting Group, Neighbors Immigration Clinic now has a new office.

“It’s been a journey to get here,” says Mizari. “But we’re excited about the future of our state and what the future holds for us and our immigrant communities.” Mizari pauses to add with a smile, “I would like to ask everyone to please keep Kentucky in your hearts and send us love.”