My name is Abraham Medina.

I left Mexico City when I was seven years old with my mother and younger brother as a result of domestic violence. During the months-long ordeal to TJ from Mexico City. In TJ, my brother and I were separated from our mother and came to the U.S. experiencing family separation and a form of child detention. Eventually we reunited with our mother in the U.S. 

I was undocumented until receiving DACA in 2013 and became a U.S. Citizen in 2025.

I identify as an uprooted person of Hñahñu (Otomi) ancestry (on grandmother's and great-grandmother's side from the state of Hidalgo), now reconnecting and learning about my various roots. I have experienced domestic violence, forced migration, family separation, human smuggling, involuntary confinement, criminalization, dehumanization and other forms of systemic violence... Along the way I have learned with others how to begin that personal and collective journey towards healing and transformation, as well as towards transformative systemic changes, and why they are necessary. This personal and collective journey is extremely difficult, but through it all, we are still here, and I am wholeheartedly committed to this personal and collective transformative journey that comes with many difficult challenges as we continue to nourish, cultivate and sustain the transformative collective power and the ecosystems necessary to generate the fundamental systemic changes needed.  

My grandmother's father was gunned down when she was three. That impacted her and ultimately my father and ultimately my mother, me and all of my siblings.

I grew up an undocumented person of color in the U.S. I began organizing with other young people around me in 10th grade. I started working as a day laborer at the age of 13. Due to being undocumented, I was a day laborer and a roasted peanuts street vendor from age 13 till my mid 20s. With the help of my physics teacher, I started a student club at my high school in 10th grade in response to the Governor at that time vetoing a bill that would have allowed driver's licenses for undocumented people in CA. I met Pavis between 10th grade and my senior year in high school as a result of this organizing. Organizing with other youth in OC, we co-created a network of youth organizers that organized and coordinated the 2006 high school walkouts in Orange County.

Around 2004-2006, during high school I became part of the national undocumented youth movement and was also organizing to challenge the proposed gang injunction that was impacting my school climate and also organizing around day laborer rights. I started to organize against the school to prison to deportation pipeline in high school. I almost got expelled for organizing the 2006 walkouts. In 2010, a fellow student was shot and killed outside of my school. I lost close friends due to gun violence. 

With Pavis and others we began to organize KYR workshops and started to organize to challenge checkpoints in our communities that were being set up to target undocumented community members-residents. Pavis and I organized with youth organizing collectives in Orange County between ~2005-2011 and organized direct actions in Orange County from like 2006 to like 2014. I co-organized deportation defense efforts in Orange County that led to the establishment of the OC Rapid Response Network in 2016. Pavis and I experienced the 2012 Anaheim Uprisings.

Around 2009 or 2010 I began to organize with other Native American and Indigenous youth a trip to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and were welcomed by Oglala Sioux elders. I was part of the first and second cohort of the UCLA Labor Center's Dream Summer Institute, the first national paid internship opportunity for undocumented youth some time between 2010-2012. I attended UCI from 2006 to 2007, Santa Ana College from ~2008-2009/2010 and graduated from UCI in 2011 with a bachelors in Sociology. I graduated with a Master in Legal and Forensic Psychology in 2018 from UCI. 

I met and learned from Dr. Aquil Basheer around 2013-2014 and began to organize for alternative emergency responders instead of police in SAUSD like Community Violence Intervention Workers or CIWs. I was part of organizing efforts to end harmful federal contracts with the Santa Ana City Jail and was an advisor to the 2017-2019 Deep Canvassing project in California and Tennessee, related to immigrant rights efforts. In addition I was the Director of the California Alliance for Youth and Community Justice (CAYCJ) from 2019-2023 organizing across the state to close California's state youth prisons. I am a former Advisory Committee member of a national End Child Detention Initiative. I was a senior program officer with Sierra Health Foundation from 2024 to 2025 and established the CA Transform Youth Justice Program co-launching and implementing the Ending Girls Incarceration (EGI) Initiative, the Justice Serving Network (JSN) Initiative and the CBO Capacity Building Initiative.

I am now a husband and proud father of two children and the struggle continues

Respectfully,

Abraham