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When Elisa rose from her chair at the headquarters of Mujeres Unidas y Activas, an activist group of Latina and Indigenous women, she reached for a cane for support.
Several years ago on her way to work, Elisa slipped on some stairs, falling a dozen steps. The incident left her with permanent injuries and exacerbated foot deformities she was born with. The aftermath disrupted her entire life. Suddenly, she couldn’t work. Her income disappeared, forcing her out of her home.
But Elisa said she believes everything happens for a reason. She is a longtime caregiver for older adults and people with disabilities, having trained as a doctor in her home country. When she found herself needing care, she turned to her church and friends for support.
“If it hadn’t been for all the good people in this country, I wouldn’t have survived,” she said. The accident, she added, grew her faith and “changed me for the better. I have a better understanding now of the people that I care for.” It also set her on a path toward activism, fighting for the rights of people with disabilities.
For Elisa, community organizing is more urgent now than ever. Like many caregivers, she was born abroad. Her story is one of many examples of how the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant attacks are on a collision course with a nationwide staffing crisis in the care economy. Programs that support older adults and those with disabilities face cuts, and those populations increasingly rely on people like Elisa — who, as a disabled immigrant worker, is more and more vulnerable to exploitation by employers.
Despite her injury and with few other options, “I push myself to work,” she said.
The San Francisco Public Press is withholding Elisa’s real name in accordance with its policies on anonymous sources.
Journey to the U.S.
Elisa’s warmth and caregiving tendencies were on display as she offered coffee and a snack to this reporter and an interpreter as soon as we walked in the door at Mujeres Unidas y Activas, the organization that supported Elisa when she arrived in San Francisco 15 years ago.
“When she got here, she was going through a really difficult situation and she trusted us enough to talk to us,” said Sofia, an organizer at Mujeres Unidas y Activas and longtime friend of Elisa. Sofia, an immigrant herself, is also using a pseudonym.
Elisa said she was brought to the United States through lies and manipulation by a boyfriend who promised marriage and a life together.
He persuaded her to start a business, putting it under his name and telling her it would help her become a citizen more quickly.
“With the false information he showed me and a supposed lawyer approving everything, plus the fact that I didn’t speak English, it was easy for him to twist everything and hide his true intentions,” she said.
Her boyfriend controlled everything — from the money she earned, to her conversations, to her ability to leave the country by frequently taking her passport — Elisa said.
“Really, I was brought here to be financially exploited and to work,” Elisa said, wiping tears from her face.
Realizing she’d been trafficked and not being able to stand it anymore, Elisa began looking for a way out. She said she faked being sick and begged her boyfriend to take her to the hospital, where a nurse connected her with a social worker. She made a plan to escape, and one day after her boyfriend hit her “harder than usual,” she called 911. Her social worker was able to help her “get out of that hell faster.”
It was then that she arrived at Mujeres Unidas y Activas.
Eventually, an acquaintance who knew that Elisa had received medical training in her home country connected her to someone looking for a home health aide.
Today, Elisa has two regular clients with whom she has worked for years, in addition to picking up others through an agency. Her regulars kept her on after the accident, even though her disability limits the care she can provide.
New fears under Trump
As immigrants are increasingly targeted by federal law enforcement, Elisa fears she may be next.
In early March, one of the people who helped support Elisa in the wake of her accident, and who later moved to Texas, was deported. The man was separated from his wife, a U.S. citizen, and their four children, a family Elisa described as pillars in the community.
“This family helped me when I couldn’t work, and I wish I could help them, but I can’t,” she said.
Though Elisa is on good terms with her employers, her immigration status remains a delicate topic.
“I really have tried not to mix those two things,” she said.
But in the safety of the Mujeres Unidas y Activas building, dressed comfortably with her hair woven into a neat braid, Elisa couldn’t hold back her thoughts. She was eager to refute right-wing talking points about immigrants.
“They say we take jobs from others. But we do the work that no one else can do,” she said.
In her case, that includes caring for a client with an intellectual disability who can be physically aggressive, Elisa said, adding that the client doesn’t know how to use the bathroom or follow common rules of proper behavior.
The client’s family “prefers that I do that because they don’t want to,” she said. “It’s as easy as they need me, and I need them.”
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Many older adults and people with disabilities live on meager fixed incomes and rely on Medicaid — a program facing cuts under the current administration. Those who qualify for state-sponsored care, and even those who don’t, often hire immigrant workers at low wages for in-home assistance, because it’s all they can afford. But the interconnectedness of these groups doesn’t stop the exploitation of immigrant caregivers.
“If they had to hire a specialty nurse to do that work, they would have to pay more than double what I make,” Elisa said.
Immigrant workers, she said, “work at all hours, many times without rest. We face wage theft because they know we’re not going to complain, especially now. So that makes abuse even more likely.”
The Trump administration’s actions are looming over Elisa’s personal life as well. She is unwilling to risk filing for disability assistance. Dependence on certain federal services can be grounds for rejecting a visa application. Though she has been told this isn’t the case for the type of visa she is applying for — a process that has already spanned many years — she considers the risk too high.
“One thing is what the law says, and another is what’s actually being done right now,” she said.
The Trump administration has violated court orders to stay deportations, summarily rescinded the visas of student activists and wrongfully detained citizens.
Activism in uncertain times
Sofia, Elisa’s friend and fellow organizer, said she could see Elisa was “a very humble, modest and hardworking person” from the moment she arrived at Mujeres Unidas y Activas seeking help. Sofia lauded Elisa’s pursuit of educational opportunities and the time and effort she puts into organizing.
Elisa is now taking classes on specialized care, criminal justice administration and English as a second language.
“I was bold enough to also add on some American Sign Language,” she said, grinning.
Elisa’s organizing efforts include attending marches and sometimes acting as a spokesperson for Mujeres Activas y Unidas. Immigrant workers at Mujeres Unidas y Activas and beyond are “definitely more united than before,” Elisa said.
As a caregiver, organizer, immigrant and person with a disability, Elisa understands first hand that people need to rely on each other to survive, especially in fraught times. But her dedication to others is just as informed by her deep sense of empathy.
“If it affects one person in the community, it affects me,” she said.
Anabelle Garay of Linguaficient, a company that provides professional language services, interpreted our interviews with Elisa and Sofia, who both speak Spanish.
The National Domestic Workers Alliance has created a resource to help immigrant caregivers know their rights regarding immigration arrests and raids, as well as labor laws.
For people who employ immigrant domestic workers, Hand in Hand: The Domestic Employers Network has written a guide to supporting employees.
