On Tuesday, October 29, at 7 p.m. in the Barone Campus Center Dogwood Room, the Center for Faith & Public Life will team up with the Office of Student Engagement to host a documentary screening of Refuge: Hombres Nuevos, followed by a panel discussion titled “Exploring the Complexities of Asylum.”
This is a question that all of us as Americans have to ask ourselves: What are we doing with the people coming [at our borders] who need the most? Are we jailing them? Or are we giving them the protection that not only we should give them as a country of compassion but we also should give them as a country of laws?
— Luis Mancheno
The 25-minute film screening will feature Episode 6 of Refuge: Hombres Nuevos, which documents the transfixing and inspiring journey of Luis Mancheno, a young Ecuadoran who survives years of abuse, six months of conversion therapy with an anti-gay therapist, and an attempt on his life before fleeing his native country to seek asylum in the United States.
Granted asylum in 2008, Mancheno now works in New York City as an immigration attorney, fighting for the rights of other refugees. In 2017, Mancheno was selected as a New Yorker of the Year by The New York Times, as one of the 30 LGBTQ change-makers and rising stars in the country by NBC News, and as the LGBTQ activist of the year by the New York City Comptroller’s Office.
In a 2018 interview with CBS News, Mancheno said, “This is a question that all of us as Americans have to ask ourselves: What are we doing with the people coming [at our borders] who need the most? Are we jailing them? Or are we giving them the protection that not only we should give them as a country of compassion but we also should give them as a country of laws?”
Mancheno’s writing has appeared in The Guardian, Vox, CBS News, The Huffington Post, Public Radio International, and The Providence Journal. He is also one of the producers and the expert host of Martes De “Migra” (Immigration Tuesdays), a weekly community education segment on NY1Noticias, a local Spanish television channel in New York.
After the film screening, both Mancheno and the documentary’s director, Josh Shelov, will join Fairfield University faculty in a panel discussion to explore the complexities of asylum from a historical, political and personal perspective. A Q&A will follow the panel.
Josh Shelov is a writer, director, and producer, known for Mayne Street (2008), Green Street Hooligans (2005) and The Best and the Brightest (2010).
Admission to the documentary screening and panel discussion is free and open to the public, it is an FYE Inspire event, and refreshments will be served.
