In the summer of 2018, news broke that the United States had adopted a radical new policy to deter people from crossing the U.S./Mexico border: separating children from their parents. After months of public outrage, the policy was rescinded but the damage was done. More than 4,200 children had been taken from their parents. Through oral history interviews, Separated: Stories of Injustice and Solidarity documents this historic human rights violation. Beyond archiving stories for posterity, the project uses applied oral history methodology to activate and disseminate stories contained within the collection of interviews in support of the ongoing policy efforts to achieve restitution for the families. As such, applied oral history facilitates opportunities for parents and sons and daughters who have experienced state-inflicted family separation to transform injustice into action. In this talk, award-winning oral historian Fanny Julissa García will discuss how we can think of the collection and archiving of oral histories not just as opportunities for preservation but also for activation and adaptation as it pertains to how and when they can serve the lives of the people who share their story.