Cyrina (she/they) deeply believes in a person's fundamental right to self determination and movement across borders.  Cyrina has worked as an immigration advocate since 2013 and as an immigration paralegal since 2018. She sees direct legal services as a harm reduction tool that needs to be accountable to and fighting for abolition -- the immigration system in the United States is not broken but violent by design. 

Prior to Pangea, Cyrina worked as a paralegal with the Immigrant Rights Program at the Asian Law Caucus (ALC) where she collaborated in representing clients in removal proceedings with underlying criminal convictions. Cyrina represented ALC in coalitional spaces alongside Pangea and other partner organizations supporting the labor and hunger strikers detained at Mesa Verde Detention Center and Golden State Annex. Prior to ALC, Cyrina worked as a paralegal with a community immigration law firm in Tucson, AZ handling family-based, humanitarian, and removal defense cases. She has extensive experience acting as a liaison between clients and their legal team, and makes sure our client's agency is centered in all our legal advocacy. 

Cyrina's experience as a paralegal is deeply informed by her experience organizing alongside fierce community advocates fighting for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) out of our communities.  Cyrina has over nine years experience working and organizing in southern Arizona, where she collectively ran a 24-hour humanitarian aid clinic along the US-Mexico border with No More Deaths/No Más Muertes, connected trans and queer asylum seekers with safe housing, resources and sponsors in northern Mexico and southern Arizona with the Transcaravana Collective, coordinated a community visitation program at Eloy Detention Center with Trans Queer Pueblo, and collectively ran a rapid response network in Tucson for those impacted by ICE and CBP raids. Through this work she has learned both the benefits and challenges of non-hierarchical and collectively governed projects and remains steadfast in her commitment to the principle that we make the road by walking.