Companeros, Colorado Immigration Rights Coalition, and Western Slope Against Trafficking present Docked – a film about the plight of immigrant sheepherders on Colorado’s Western Slope, followed by a discussion with activists Thomas Acker and Ignacio Alvarado.

Docked examines the living and working conditions of immigrant South-American sheepherders employed on the Western Range of the Rocky Mountains. Brought into the country through the Department of Labor and USCIS’ H2A temporary visa program, these non- immigrant, temporary sheepherders work with very lax federal oversite and numerous federal exemptions (carve-outs). Given their long hours, they also work for very little pay. This film focuses on the experiences of Tom Acker, a human rights activist; Ignacio Alvarado, a former sheepherder and current outreach worker from Chile; and Lionel, a sheepherder from Chile.

Sarah C. Sifers is a Salt Lake City based documentary filmmaker. Her first film, Fate of the Lhapa, documented the lives of three elderly Tibetan shamans living in a refugee camp in Nepal who were practicing an ancient healing tradition that’s in danger of extinction. Docked is Sifers’ second documentary film. It exams the plight of sheepherders working the Western Range of the Rocky Mountains through the eyes of Tom Acker, a human rights activist, and Ignacio Alvarado, a former sheepherder and current outreach worker from Chile.

Thomas Acker is Professor Emeritus of Spanish at Grand Junction’s Colorado Mesa University. As a key member of Western Slope Against Trafficking, the Colorado Human Trafficking Council, the Catholic Diocese of Pueblo’s Human Development Commission, and other social justice organizations, Acker has worked for nearly two decades on the issue of immigrant integration and civil rights. While he has become especially involved with the plight of H2A visa workers in the western U.S., he continues to strive towards improving all workers’ rights, and healing the west’s social and economic inequities.

Ignacio Alvarado, a native of Chile’s rural Patagonia region, worked in agriculture and served in the Chilean military before coming to the United States as an H2A sheep herder in the 1990’s. In his years on a sheep ranch in northwest Colorado, he gained a wide perspective into the industry. After Alvarado left sheepherding, he continued to visit his former fellow shepherds as an outreach worker for Colorado Legal Services.

After meeting Tom Acker at an immigrant rights meeting, the two activists collaborated on material used in “Overworked and Underpaid,” the 2010 CLS survey of herder conditions, and they have been working together on immigrant rights issues ever since.