EPCC Student Featured in The Amanpour Hour, Documentary

Staff report

An El Paso Community College (EPCC) student is getting the chance of a lifetime to tell her story on the grand stage with Christiane Amanpour's PBS show Amanpour & Company.

Gabriela Castaneda grew up in the Valley of Juarez, but her family moved to El Paso when she was 15 years old. Gabriela graduated from Clint High School in 2005, and took a role of provider, working as the Communications Director for the Border Network of Human Rights, among other roles… but along with her family, she herself was an undocumented immigrant living in this country while her father stayed in Mexico.

Gabriela Castaneda at computer for interview with Amanpour

Gabriela's move to El Paso and residency has been anything but easy. A mother of three, her husband was deported in 2007 and spent nearly 70 months in prison. Her brother was detained in a detention center in Aurora, Colorado, and has spent his life in Juarez, not able to travel back to the United States.

As an immigrant rights activist, Gabriela is now working for The Movement of Immigrant Leaders in Pennsylvania (MILPA). She has previously helped organize 'Hugs Not Walls' on the Rio Grande river and organized other immigrants with detained family members for car protests outside the El Paso ICE detention facility, demanding they be released under terrible conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I believe this is the time where people can organize and can fight back to regain their dignity and rights," Gabriela said. During the 'Hugs Not Walls' event, she registered families so they could have the chance to embrace their loved ones, and ironically, was able to hug her father for the first time in 30 years. Her father passed away in 2022, that being the last time they saw each other.

After showing interest in her activism, producers of BORDERLAND, THE LINE WITHIN reached out to Gabriela to help tell her story of family separation in a documentary dedicated to exposing the border industrial complex. “It exposes the cruel human cost of immigration at the same time as it weaves in stories of immigrants who want to build a social movement to demand their human rights," Gabriela added.

During a showing of the documentary in New York City, Gabriela joined the panel via Skype and intrigued the producer of CNN International and the PBS Show, Amanpour and Company, featuring award winning journalist Christiane Amanpour. The producer invited Gabriela to speak on the show and talk about her role in the documentary and her life as a social fighter. That interview took place Thursday, September 12, 2024.

Gabriela is hoping EPCC can help her reach another goal. She is studying Psychology, and her EPCC Public Speaking Professor has taken notice. “I will say that even this early in the semester, she already stands out as an exemplary student in our Public Speaking class," EPCC Speech Communication Assistant Professor, Erika Portillo, said. “Her being featured on this documentary for her activism is so exciting. She already possesses the public speaking skills we require and is putting them into practice in her personal life. I look forward to having her set a high standard and example when it comes time for my students to prepare their protest speeches."

She hopes EPCC Psychology will help her attend to the treatment of immigrants during this chaotic time. “I want to help immigrant children in the near future. Many of them are very traumatized from their experience traveling through Mexico to get here and I want to help them deal with that trauma," Gabriela said.

Gabriela also hopes this documentary, and subsequent interview with Christiane Amanpour, helps lead to a change of attitude towards the border. “We cannot fight and win alone, we must understand that the problem of the immigrant is the problem of the African American, the poor white - as well as the immigrants who have been here for years and those who are just arriving," Gabriela said. “We need to learn to solve problems collectively because only then will we have power. Come to the screening, get involved, speak up and stand up."

The interview will air in part Saturday, September 14, 2024, at 9:00 a.m. MT in the show The Amanpour Hour on CNN and CNN International. The full version of the interview will air Monday, September 16, 2024, at 11:00 a.m. MT on CNN International and at 10:00 p.m. MT on the PBS show, Amanpour and Company, available on KCOS-TV on Channel 13.

About Amanpour & Company

CNN Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour has earned every major television journalism award, including 11 News and Documentary Emmy Awards, four Peabody Awards, two George Polk Awards, three duPont-Columbia Awards and the Courage in Journalism Award.

Amanpour & Co Website: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/

About the Documentary, BORDERLAND The Line Within

It lies within every undocumented immigrant family with the threat that at any moment they can be captured, incarcerated, deported; their lives destroyed. BORDERLAND I The Line Within not only exposes the profitable business of immigration and its human cost, but weaves together the stories of immigrant heroines and heroes resisting and showing a way forward, intent on building a movement in the shadow of the border industrial complex, recognizing the human rights of all. It's scheduled to be shown at the El Paso Film Festival 12:30 p.m. Saturday, September 28, 2024, at the El Paso Museum of Art.

Link to the Documentary and Schedule: https://borderland.skylight.is