Bloggerlife.blog

12/14/2025

Today’s blog

Lynn Murphy Mark

My name is….

Allegra Love. That is the name of one of the best humans to walk this earth. It’s not a name you might know, unless you are from Santa Fe, and even then you might not know of all the good works that this woman does. I met Allegra when I was a school nurse at a  middle school in Santa Fe. At that time, Allegra was working for the Santa Fe Public Schools district. It was an unusual job in that she did not work as an educator. Instead she used her training as an immigration attorney to help the students and families with any immigration issues that might arise. She had been a teacher and was completely taken by the issues that the kids and their parents faced – many of them undocumented, but living and working in Santa Fe. 

Allegra put feet to her concerns. She enrolled in law school and became thoroughly schooled in immigration law, a very complex branch of our judicial system. My contact with her was to invite her to speak at our monthly wellness meeting of Social Workers, Counselors, and myself. 

Our relationship deepened as we had various experiences together. She took me to Dilley, Texas, to work for free for a week at a women and children detention camp. We joined several other immigration attorneys from around the country who were also eager to help women and their children who had been captured and detained by the US border patrol. In Santa Fe she started a free clinic for kids who wanted to apply for President Obama’s new program – DACA, or, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. I volunteered for the clinic every Friday and began understanding a little about the complicated and broken immigration system in our country.

I credit Allegra with my interest and eventual passion for immigration law. It’s been 10 years since I followed her advice and applied to be accredited by the Department of Homeland Security as an immigration paralegal. It has been a life changing experience and I will always be grateful to her. 

This morning on Facebook I came across her latest post:

“I haven’t made this completely clear to the community, because I have been building out resources this fall but, if you are in Santa Fe and a friend/family member is arrested by ICE you can contact me for free legal aid. Every case is different but I can certainly get in touch with your loved one in detention, evaluate the case, and help everyone figure out what the best next steps are and make a strategy. 505-451-4024/allegralove1@gmail.com. Please respect that I am not soliciting calls about all legal cases (I take those through referrals from community partners), but want to be a free resources for our community in the event of an arrest by ICE.”

This offer represents exactly who Allegra is. She also shuttles between Santa Fe and the Texas border, helping her colleagues in the very busy El Paso area. El Paso is kind of ground zero for immigration challenges that eventually spread to other parts of the country. Last year my workplace graciously sent me to El Paso for a conference where I was exposed to information about what to expect under this new administration. Everything I learned, and then some, has come to pass under 47 – actually under Stephen Miller’s evil direction.

Allegra has turned her passion into efforts to help transgender immigrants who have been detained and thrown into New Mexico prisons. The conditions in the prisons, and the cruelty the immigrants face, is unimaginable. That has not stopped her. She has traveled around New Mexico providing people with legal advice and support. She has managed to negotiate an exit from prison for many individuals.

I can’t say enough about how difficult and challenging this work is. I know she has faced some days when continuing the work seemed impossible. She has willingly paid the price that any practitioner faces after being immersed in people’s troubles and exposed to the life-altering, cruel, treatment by our government. 

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink…Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Matthew25:35-40. Thank you, Allegra, for living into these words.