Maru Mora Villalpando

Maru Mora Villalpando is a community organizer and immigrant. She was born and raised in Mexico City In the U.S., she has spent more than two decades working for racial justice and immigrant rights. She is the founder of La Resistencia, the group’s main focus is to end all detentions and deportations, and to shut down the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, WA. Maru is also a founding member of MiJente, a national digital organizing Latinx group. Due to her work against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency put her in deportation proceedings in 2017. Despite these challenges, Maru, her family and her community remained undeterred and continued their community work. In September 2021 Maru was granted prosecutorial discretion by the same agency that tried to deport her, and with this recent win Maru continues the work to end all detentions and deportations in Washington State where she currently lives.