Maria Jose Fletcher, co-founder of VIDA Legal Assistance, is featured on a panel displaying women recognized by the ONE Campaign at a recent U2 concert in Miami.
María José Fletcher, a human rights attorney and co-founder of Miami-based VIDA Legal Assistance — a longtime CIW partner dedicated to helping survivors of violence, with a particular focus on immigrants and women — was shocked to learn this past June that she had been selected for recognition by U2’s lead singer Bono and his ONE Campaign. In speaking to the Miami Herald in a recent article about her recognition, María José was typically self-effacing:
“Seeing my face among all these other amazing women, who are my role models, I was very humbled,” Fletcher told the Miami Herald. “I didn’t feel that I should have been there. I was very impressed by it and I still can’t believe that they put my name and picture there.”
But don’t let her humility, which is indeed genuine, fool you. María José and VIDA are widely respected leaders on many fronts, from fighting domestic violence to winning asylum cases for survivors of unimaginable abuse and torture. María José has worked closely with the CIW for years, both in the CIW’s anti-slavery efforts and in developing a groundbreaking new curriculum for farmworkers and supervisors for use in combatting violence against women in the fields and at home. As a co-founder of the Freedom Network USA, she has trained federal and state law enforcement officers, judges, NGOs and more — here and abroad — on recognizing, investigating, and prosecuting human trafficking cases, and has collaborated with the CIW on several of our most important slavery prosecutions.
Maria Jose Fletcher meets with Bono backstage after the Miami concert.
When invited a few years ago to be a guest on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” immigration attorney María José Fletcher turned down the offer.
The rejection was one of kindness, she said, to respect the privacy of her clients, whom the show would’ve centered on.
Fletcher’s work is very sensitive. In 2011, she co-founded Vida Legal Assistance, a nonprofit dedicated to helping immigrant survivors of violent crimes — particularly domestic, sexual assault and human trafficking. As the only organization of its kind in South Florida, the work is demanding, too.
And for Fletcher, it’s also fulfilling.
“Some people do things for money, other people do things because they’re passionate about what they do,” said her husband Michael Fletcher, a food -and-beverage manager at a Coral Gables condominium. “Her world is helping people.”…
The article continued, giving María José a chance to describe her approach to what can be very difficult, demanding work:
… Fletcher, who finished law school in her 30s, said that since the concert she has felt even more empowered to continue her immigration work.
Her group Vida Legal Assistance has developed relationships with the U.S. State Department and other federal agencies. Traveling across the states and abroad, Fletcher has shared ideas and spread awareness about how to properly treat immigrant survivors of violence.
“Don’t get me wrong, I get tired,” she said. “But this is one life. You want to go to sleep and say ‘I did something.’”
She doesn’t expect to see violence disappear in her lifetime, or in the lifetimes of her three children.
That doesn’t deter her from trying to eradicate it.
Fletcher said that through the years she has represented many victims of horrific violence, cases that showed “humanity’s power to commit bad things.”
Fletcher’s line of work — which she says demands “a capacity to listen and be non-judgmental” — ensures survivors will come out stronger, just as the client who nominated her did.
“It’s not about winning the case, it’s about how this person understands justice and how I’m going to get justice for this person,” she said. “We’re not doing this for us, we’re doing it for the community, [for] who we’re working with.”
We at the CIW are proud to call María José our colleague and partner in some of the toughest work we do. But more than that, we are proud to call her our dear friend. María José is the kind of person that reminds you, no matter how dark or hard the road ahead might seem, that humanity’s better angels will never grow weary, but will — humbly, tirelessly — put their heads down and emerge victorious. And for that, we join our voices with those of Bono and the ONE Campaign in thanking her for her extraordinary work.
