Maria Hinojosa went to the University of Illinois in Chicago for a long, deep conversation with Lulú Martínez. She is one of the Dream Nine, the group of undocumented activists voluntarily detained after re-entering the US from Mexico in 2013. The young Chicana activist talks about her two weeks in a detention center, her activism and the meaning of citizenship.  Watch the extended interview, where Lulú talks about the intersections of her queer and undocumented identities, her struggle to create a civil rights movement that doesn’t exclude anyone and her activist work in Chicago.

Lulú Martínez is an undocumented queer Chicana from Mexico City and a student at UIC in the Gender and Women’s Studies Department at the University of IL at Chicago. She is also a member of the Fearless Undocumented Alliance (FUA). She immigrated to the U.S. with her parents and brother at the age of three. She helped co-found the Immigrant Youth Justice League (IYJL), a Chicago-based undocumented youth-led organization. She is currently organizing the third Bring Them Home campaign in which 150 families will turn themselves into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and ask for re-entry into the U.S. to be reunited with their families.

Photo of the Dream Nine (from left to right): Luis Leon Lopez (Marion, North Carolina), Maria Inés Peniche (Boston, Massachusetts), Adriana Diaz (Phoenix, Arizona), Lulú Martínez (Chicago, Illinois), Ceferino Santiago (Lexington, Kentucky), Marco Saavedra (New York, New York), Lizbeth Mateo (Los Angeles, California), Claudia Amaro (Wichita, Kansas); courtesy of photographer Steve Pavey on Flickr.