During a recent meeting of the President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (PITF), the Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM) was honored with the Presidential Award for Extraordinary Efforts to Combat Trafficking in Persons. GW Law Professor Cori Alonso-Yoder began working with CDM in 2009 as a law clerk in Mexico during her first summer of law school. She has served on the Board of the organization since 2017 and was voted Board President in 2021. She attended the award ceremony alongside Senior White House officials and principals from 20 participating PITF agencies, including Attorney General Merrick Garland, Secretaries Alejandro Mayorkas and Xavier Becerra, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons Cindy Dyer, and EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows.
The award, signed by President Biden, states that CDM was selected “for its outstanding record of assisting thousands of migrant workers to defend their rights and its years of tireless advocacy and organizing to advance a more just and humane migration process free of forced labor and other forms of exploitation.”
The Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Inc. supports Mexico-based migrant workers to defend and protect their rights as they move between their home communities in Mexico and their workplaces in the United States. With its binational, multilingual staff and geographic reach, it has grown in response to increasing needs for its advocacy and services and seek to overcome the border as a barrier to justice. To find out more about CDM's work and impact, please visit here.