About me
Yahaira Padilla grew up undocumented and is a beneficiary of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). She was born in Jalisco, Mexico, and came to the US at the age of 4 along with her mother and siblings.
In 2006, Yahaira moved from East Los Angeles to Seattle, Washington where she started organizing in High School as she faced the reality and challenges of being an undocumented student. While in high school, Yahaira cultivated an after-school club for Latinx students as she was politicized and engaged by Proyecto Saber, one of two ethnic studies programs offered in the entire Seattle Public School system. She participated in advocacy days in the state capital where she advocated for the state Dream Act which expands access to state aid for undocumented students as a delegate of the Latino/a Education Achievement Project and Latino Civic Alliance in their Latino Legislative Days.
Yahaira joined WAISN in 2020 part-time while working full-time in the medical field as a medical assistant. She worked on the frontlines in the medical field during the rise of the COVID-19 global pandemic as well as on the frontlines in the immigrant community through her role as a hotline shift lead, ensuring that undocumented communities had a trusted community navigator of resources while facing this unprecedented pandemic.
Yahaira, as the Immigration Specialist coordinator at WAISN, comes to share her story and help the community understand the broader institutions and systems that have targeted them historically so they reclaim their story. Yahaira understands the power of community organizing and knows that united they can fight back against the deportation machine.
