In the mid 90’s, Ms. Mendez-Quiroga started a non profit group called ‘Justice for The Women of Juarez' in Los Angeles, California. Along with her colleagues, namely Azul Luna and Diana Washington Valdez, she worked tirelessly to broaden awareness of the femicides taking place in the city of Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso,
Texas. Since then, the occurrence of femicide (the widespread killing of women), which mostly targeted poor young women, has grown. Femicide similar to that which
was happening in Juarez in the 90’s is happening now in Tijuana, Mexico and Guatemala, where perpetrators act
with full impunity and investigations by authorities are rare. Up to our current day, this alarming display of violence has received very little media attention.

In her investigations, Ms. Mendez-Quiroga and her team attempted to assist impacted families, such as Eva Arce, a mother in Juarez whose daughter was missing. Weeks
later, the murdered body of her missing daughter was found.

For years, young poor girls and women were lured to the bordertown of Juarez to work in assembly plants, known as maquiladoras, and factories that blanket the border.
When many of the girls went missing, police did little if anything to locate the victims or pursue the suspects involved. When bodies were found, the cases were dismissed by local police. Investigations by Ms. Mendez-
Quiroga and her team found that, in many cases, police did little or nothing to assist the victims’ families, and many times the victims themselves were blamed for their
gruesome fate.

In the mid 90’s, Ms. Mendez-Quiroga started a non profit group called ‘Justice for The Women of Juarez' in Los Angeles, California. Along with her colleagues, namely Azul
Luna and Diana Washington Valdez, she worked tirelessly to broaden awareness of the femicides taking place in the city of Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, Texas. Since then, the occurrence of femicide (the widespread killing of women), which mostly targeted poor young women, has grown. Femicide similar to that which
was happening in Juarez in the 90’s is happening now in Tijuana, Mexico and Guatemala, where perpetrators act
with full impunity and investigations by authorities are rare. Up to our current day, this alarming display of violence has
received very little media attention.

Through the activities in the mid-90s of the
Justice for The Women of Juarez group, and other NGO’s, several caravans were coordinated to travel from Los Angeles to El
Paso, and then Juarez, as a form of protest and solidarity with the victim’s families. The group coordinated numerous marches and press conferences to denounce the murders
and bring awareness to the ongoing femicide crisis.

Ms. Mendez-Quiroga and her fellow activists stood in solidarity with the victims families and subsequently, many more NGO’s across the Americas, including Amnesty
International, became involved in the movement.

In addition to her activist work, Ms. Mendez-Quiroga directed, wrote and produced the film “Border Echoes (Ecos De Una Frontera)” concerning the murders. In working on the ilm she closely worked to document the
murders for nearly six years. While working at KTTV as an assignment editor and field producer, she was part of the first news media team in Southern California to begin
covering the story and bring attention, not only to the murders of women in Juarez, but to the general rate of violence in the border town.

Eventually, the documentary “Border Echoes (Ecos De Una Frontera)” and journalist Diana Washington Valdez’s book, “Harvest of Women (Cosecha de Mujeres),” among other
documentaries, were used as evidence against the

government of Mexico in a trial by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights court in Chile. The results of the trial found the Mexican government culpable for not doing enough to protect and enforce the rights of victims. In certain cases, reparations were granted for some of the families. While not enough to ever compensate for the loss those families endured, action on behalf of justice was taken by the international community and Ms. Mendez-
Quiroga’s efforts and documentary contributed greatly to it. The international community came together to denounce the Mexican government’s failure to adequately protect the rights and safety of its most vulnerable citizens.

In addition to her work covering the femicides of Juarez, Ms. Mendez-Quiroga has ventured far and wide in the name of justice. She met and interviewed a deported man, and gang member, from Los Angeles, who had been sent to and jailed in Honduras. In getting to know this man and
other maras, or local gang members, Ms. Mendez-Quiroga was able to gain access to the jail in San Pedro Sula, Honduras — one of the most and dangerous and notorious jails in the world. As a result of the deportation of gang members from the United States to countries like Honduras, the communities which received them became
victims to violence and killings perpetuated by those deported gang members. Authorities from Honduras at the time were reaching out to the L.A County Sheriff’s Dept. hoping that the DARE anti-gang program could be introduced to schools and the community in Honduras, in a response to the increasing occurrence of gang violence which accompanied the deportees.

Alarmingly, while in Honduras working on this investigation, Ms. Mendez-Quiroga and her team discovered that there was a complete void of judicial infrastructure whatsoever to complete a real investigation into the murders and
violence taking place. The persons responsible and the local gangs acted with full impunity and avoided scrutiny by maintaining a powerful atmosphere of intimidation, and have continued to do so up to the present day. The lawlessness Ms. Mendez-Quiroga and her team witnessed
was ubiquitous and self-evident. The lack of infrastructure was total. No roads or community parks, no tangible government authority, no functional schools, endless rows of shanty homes, and zero mechanisms of civic accountability. After 1998’s Hurricane Mitch, several efforts were made to provide humanitarian support to the devastated areas. Several non-profit groups, Christian Organizations, and Catholic Charity groups were present in the community, actively making attempts to bring help to the most vulnerable and poorest of the poor. However,
when humanitarian relief shipment containers arrived in the Central American ports, local strongmen held them for ransom, demanding thousands of dollars to allow community members to collect the supplies and donations.

This type of endemic dysfunction and lawlessness lives at the heart of today’s immigration crisis. Complete social disarray in Central America has become the norm. In their investigations, Ms. Mendez-Quiroga and her team quick realized that rampant corruption and widespread violence
are the dominant trends in the region. As a result, the instability and duress which these dynamics produce has caused of the unfettered migration of countless families and unaccompanied minors from Central American counties, such as Honduras. The unending violence, murders, extortion, torture, and steady trend of gang
members perpetuating criminal behavior with full impunity, coupled with the lack of governmental infrastructure and the devastating impacts of natural disasters, have combined to create a unlivable war zone for everyday people. No future is available to the assaulted resident populations of Central America. Nearly half of regional
children do not attend school and no political, economic, or civic solutions exist to combat the myriad threats that families in the area are confronted with daily