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Debbie Marulanda

Posted by The Star-Ledger December 24, 2007 12:00 AM

Categories: Activist

A Life Saver
Colombian immigrant rescues refugees from war, human trafficking

Story by BY BRIAN DONOHUE / Photos by PATTI SAPONE

https://blog.nj.com/iamnj/2007/12/debbie_marulandanot_done.html

 A LIFE SAVER 

Colombian immigrant rescues refugees from war, human trafficking 

Monday, December 24, 2007 BY BRIAN DONOHUE Star-Ledger Staff 

Debbie Marulanda was driving to her son's wedding with her mother, two daughters, and granddaughter packed into her car. As she pulled into the parking lot of a Long Island catering hall, the cell phone in her Michael Kors handbag started to ring. "Oh no," Marulanda recalls thinking to herself. "Not now." It was an agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He needed Marulanda in New Jersey. Federal prosecutors had just charged three people with smuggling groups of girls and young women from the West African nation of Togo, allegedly forcing them to live and work in indentured servitude, braiding hair at local salons. A dozen traumatized, undocumented, and penniless young women had been pulled from two squalid houses in Newark and East Orange.

 "We need someone to take them," the ICE agent told Marulanda. That's what Marulanda does when human trafficking cases like this come up in New Jersey. She takes the victims. She finds them counseling, a place to stay, clothes, food, and medical care. Finds them a visa. Hopefully, helps them find a better life in the United States. Marulanda, 53, a Union Township resident and Colombian immigrant, is the director of the Refugee Resettlement and Human Trafficking programs for Catholic Charities in Newark. Last year, she and her staff of three workers assisted 83 refugees fleeing war or persecution in Cuba, Liberia, Russia, Nigeria, and other countries. The agency does the same for victims of human trafficking -- women who had been tricked or coerced into coming to the United States, only to find themselves in lives of forced labor and prostitution. There are 52 women in her office's trafficking caseload -- some of whom had been forced into work at go-go bars, restaurants, and hair salons. Others are recovering from years as trapped and abused as domestic workers. 

BREAKING THE ICE 

That Friday in September during her son's wedding, Marulanda arranged by phone for the Togonese women to be taken to a local hotel and later a convent, where they were cared for by Catholic Charities staff members. She returned on Sunday to New Jersey, where, for the next four days, the 12 women refused to talk to Marulanda or other social workers. At times, Marulanda said, they physically turned their backs when she tried to talk to them. Working nonstop on the case, Marulanda had spent almost no time with her daughters and granddaughter, who were visiting from Colombia for the wedding earlier that week. So that Wednesday, she took them to work with her reticent Togonese trafficking victims. 

It was her granddaughter -- the dark-eyed 5-year-old Marulanda boasts about constantly -- who broke the ice. The Togonese women befriended Marulanda's granddaughter, braiding her hair into long rows and calling her "amiga" -- the first Spanish word the Togonese women had learned. Finally, they began to talk to Marulanda, too. Today, the 12 women are living on their own, attending local schools, studying English, working on their own, with legal immigration status. They call her constantly with questions about everything from grocery shopping to how to turn on the heat in their apartment. "That was the moment they really started trusting," Marulanda said of the day the women met her granddaughter. "For me, this is a beautiful process." None of this -- her life in New Jersey, her work with refugees -- is anything Marulanda ever imagined doing. Married at 16 and divorced by age 20, she entered law school after her split with her husband sparked an interest in the law. Before coming to the United States in 2003, she was a high-powered lawyer in Colombia, walking the halls of the Colombian Congress in various government jobs, as a lobbyist for AT&T, and later as an assistant counsel to the minister of education.

 In the 1990s, she founded a high-profile criminal defense practice that recruited top defense attorneys to defend clients in major drug prosecutions. In Colombia's stratified society, Marulanda hobnobbed with those at the top. "I was always making money, thinking about how to make money, and how to spend the money. Socializing with the big shots," she said. "It was a different life." These days, she works out of a Newark office where the rumble of the Broad Street buses nearly shakes the framed photo of Jesus from the walls behind her chipped laminate desk. In an office of social workers in understated garb and smart shoes, the blond in designer eyeglasses and silk scarves, and high heels still keeps her glamour up. "I still like nice clothes," she said. "I'm still the same person." 

NO SURPRISE 

Those who knew her in Colombia are far from surprised at her career change.

 Even as she managed a stable of lawyers, doling out casework, massaging egos, and handling the press, they say they recognized a compassionate core wrapped beneath the sharp, determined persona. "I'm not surprised at the work she's doing, and I'm not surprised at the success she's having," said Juan Fernández, Marulanda's former partner, in a telephone interview from Bogotá. "This is not a change of thinking -- she has always been very open, caring, and creative. She has always wanted to help people." Fernández said the work Marulanda did as a criminal defense attorney on several major drug cases gave her a sense of the human toll taken on those forced to live in society's darkest underworlds. "She knows the environment of victims," Fernández said. 

Still, Marulanda's path from Bogotá to Newark was not a straight one. When she finished her master's degree in 1988 (her thesis was a study of people driven from their homes by Colombia's decades-long civil war), she had no plans to come to the United States. 

In the summer of 2002, she came to New Jersey to care for her elderly mother, then living in Elizabeth. Weeks later, her mother handed her a large yellow envelope with immigration papers inside. Marulanda was puzzled until her mother told her she had applied for her daughter's green card a decade earlier. Her case had come up. All she had to do was fill out the paperwork for permanent U.S. residency. "That day changed everything," she said. Marulanda got her green card and stayed for months to care for her mother. One frigid day, she noticed a bedraggled elderly woman rummaging through the trash for food outside her mother's Cherry Street apartment. Marulanda vowed to try and help her. Her search led her to the offices of Catholic Charities' senior programs.

 On the lookout for work in the U.S., she asked the agency for a job. "She came in with her eyes wide open, in a bright pink scarf and high heels, and she click-clacked across the room," recalled Claire Elton, director of Catholic Charities' adult services division. "I'll never forget that. I said, 'Oh my goodness, look at this woman.'" After a year of volunteer work, Marulanda was put on staff, running several seniors programs, from home grocery delivery to a translation service. Catholic Charities hired her to run the trafficking and refugee program last year. Marulanda said it was no epiphany, just her decision to follow the path on which she found herself. She said the experience of caring for her mother and the neighbor pushed her toward social service work. "You could talk to a lot of people at this agency and hear the same stories," she said, constantly trying to deflect the conversation away from her own life...

Brian Donohue may be reached at bdonohue@starledger.com or (973) 392-1543. © 2007 The Star Ledger, © 2007 NJ.com All Rights Reserved.

In My Own Words...

For over 16 years, I have dedicated my life to standing with victims of human trafficking and refugees, refusing to look away from injustice. My journey began at Catholic Charities of Newark, where meeting the first survivor changed my life forever. Since then, I have worked alongside federal agencies, nonprofits, and compassionate advocates to build awareness and provide comprehensive care for survivors. This work has brought both fear and joy, but always purpose—and I remain committed to ensuring that every voice silenced by exploitation is heard, every story is honored, and every person is given the chance to live free.