October 12, 2023 • 26 mins
Luis Cortes Romero became a lawyer thanks to DACA but can he save the very program that granted him his work permit from President Donald Trump? A Supreme Court battle wages on to save Dreamers from deportation.
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Speaker 1 (00:26):
Attorney Luis Cortejomero gets a call. The other person on
the other end of the phone says, his name is
Tony Ramirez. He's calling on behalf of his brother Daniel, who,
like Louise, is a doctor recipient and he just got
picked up by eyes. He might be the first doctor recipient,
(00:48):
the first Dreamer arrested by the Trump administration. Confused, Louise asks,
did he miss up somehow? Was he in jail? Did
he lose his DOCA? No, they just picked him up.
The voice on the phone says it's a Friday, and
(01:14):
Daniel's on the verge of having to spend the weekend
in a detention center in Washington. His brother Tony tells
Louise that he was in their first call. All the
other lawyers told Tony he'd have to wait until Monday.
Louise can't get the image of Daniel, a fellow DOCA
recipient forced to be in captivity for several days, out
(01:37):
of his head. That could happen to me, he thinks,
So Louise drives to the detention center. He tells the
front desk that he's there to meet his client, Daniel
Ramirez for a second the idea that they might arrest
him to runs across Louise's mind. After a while, they
(02:03):
leave Louise into a room where Daniel is waiting. Louise
can see that Daniel is scared and very confused. They
were looking for somebody, Daniel says in a soft voice.
They were looking for my dad, but they just assumed
I was him. They didn't even ask me any questions.
(02:26):
They just put me in cuffs because of my tattoos.
Louise notices the letters BCS tatted on Daniel's arm. It
stands for Baja California, so the initials of Daniel's birth estate.
The ICE agents are calling it a gang tattoo. It's
(02:47):
an intimidation tactic and it's working. Louise tries to stop
Daniel from panicking and says everything's gonna be okay, but
Louise is not sure what's happening. DOCA was supposed to
protect people like Daniel, people like Louis two, but in
(03:09):
the following months, the Trump administration is going to strip
Daniel of his protected status and fight to deport him,
and also to end DAKA for everyone, and as far
as Louise is concerned, there's nothing okay about that. I'm
(03:30):
Patti Rodriguez, i'mmeric G.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Lindo.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
This is Out of the Shadows, a podcast about America's
tangled history of immigration. Last season, we tackled Ronald Reagan's
nineteen eighty six Amnisty Act. This season, we're tracing the
origins of DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a
contentious executive order to protect undocumented young people from being.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Deported issued by former President Barack Obama in twenty twelve.
DACA was meant to be a temporary gap on a
broken immigration system. It was like putting a bucket under
a leaky roof. But with multiple Supreme Court challenges and
looming presidential elections, the roof feels like it may collapse
at any moment, impacting the US economy and American culture
(04:17):
as we know it. Meanwhile, the future of millions of
lives hangs in the balance.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Welcome to Out of the Shadows, Dreamers.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
All right.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
So it's twenty seventeen Trump's first year in office, and
he's already killed DABA, Obama's short lived program that would
have extended deportation protection to undocumented immigrant parents of American
born children. Then, in September, the Trump administration makes its
(05:04):
next move on immigration. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announces the
end of DACA.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Good morning, I'm here today to announce that the program
known as DACA that was effectuated under the Obama administration
is being rescinded.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
The move is led by Sessions and then Senior adviser
Stephen Miller, whose fingerprints were on some of Trump's harshest decisions.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
The policy was implemented unilaterally, to great controversy and legal concern.
In other words, the executive branch, through DACA, deliberately sought
to achieve what the legislative branch specifically refused to authorize
on multiple occasions. Such an open ended circumvention of immigration
(05:56):
laws was an unconstitutional exercise of a authority by the
executive branch.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
In the same way that Obama uses executive power to
bring DACA to life, Trump used his to stick a
dagger it's beating heart. Just like that, hundreds of thousands
of dreamers were about to lose their work permits, their
way to make a living gone, or worse, that all
(06:28):
be deported. Trump's sudden decision raised all these questions, especially
for lawyers like Louis.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
We were still working on Daniel's case when when we
heard about the news about DOCA NY there was rumors
around there being a big immigration announcement being done and
that it was going to happen. I remember it was
like on a Friday, so we were all kind of
waiting to see what would happen Friday, and nothing happened,
And it wasn't until it was that following Monday where
(07:05):
then Attorney General Jeff Sessions came out and announced the.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Ending of DACA in Daniel's case from the top of
the show. He was stripped of his DAKA status, but
Louise and his team worked hard to reinstate it. The
case snowballed and made it to federal court.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
We were able to map out a legal blueprint as
to what is DACA illegally and how can the courts
defend it and what can the government do with it
and what can they do with it.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
When Louise got the federal judge to restore Daniel's DACA status,
it was a huge moment for Daniel. But that fight
was about to become much bigger than about one guy
with the Baja tattoo.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Hard Well.
Speaker 5 (07:57):
I had a great arte. Folks were talking a great
love for them. And people think in terms of children,
but they're really young adults. I have a love for
these people, and hopefully now Congress will be able to
help them and do it properly. And I can tell
you in speaking to members of Congress, they want to
be able to do something and do it right, and
(08:19):
really we have no choice. We have to be able
to do something. And I think it's going to work
out very well, and long term it's going to be
the right sellers.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
After the break, Louise takes on Trump.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Louis had one Daniel's case by proving that the Trump
administration couldn't just end for one person, so how could
they end it for hundreds of thousands of people? Luista
he stumbled onto the answer.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
We were able to defend DACA for an individual when
we felt like the government was acting unlawfully. Can we
scale this to defend all of DACA?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
His team cut wind of other suits against the administration,
none of which were representing DACA recipients.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
One of the things that we realized is that immediately
when that happened, there was some lawsuits that were filed
and we saw that the state of California filed the lawsuit.
We saw that the University of California system, the U
See Regents, you see Davis, UCLA, they filed the lawsuit,
but no one was filing a lawsuit on behalf of
the actual dreamers. And these stories are important to tell.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Worry that those people who were actually impacted by Trump's
policies weren't being represented, and his team saw an opportunity
to represent those voices. His team's early plans considered filing
the suit with Louise as the face of it, but
Louise wanted to work on the case rather than be
the case.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
And so I started calling doc recipients that I knew,
a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, and I wanted to
make sure that we had a cross representation of folks
and said I told them, Hey, we're trying to file
a lawsuit to try to stop this, and we need
people to be our plaintiffs, to be our clients. Do
you want to be this person? By the way, I
need to know tonight, So I'll give you time to
think about it right now, but I need to know
like later today. Uh, So I need to know in
(10:37):
a few hours, talk to whoever we need to talk to,
but it's going to We're going to file a lawsuit.
And six people said yes. We quickly started filing, putting
it together, and we filed. We filed a lawsuit on
behalf of the doctor recipients on a Wednesday, and by
that Monday, we were in court and things were moving fast.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Attorney to Sessions gave six months before the program would end,
so things were moving at lightning speed.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
And this team of people who were there there was
so there was a large team of people because now
we were with the state of California, we were with
the UC regions, and I was by far the youngest
person there. So I just assumed that people who were
older like would want to like argue the case and
you know, be in court and do whatever. And you know,
(11:30):
I was. I was just happy to be there. So
I just assumed that was going to happen. But the
judge in California said, you know, like, hey, this thing
is moving fast, and so we're gonna I remember one
time he said, We're going to have a court hearing
to see if I'm going to give an order to
keep the program in place, right the injunction that ultimately
kept the at least part of the doctor program alive
during this entire fight, because I want to hear it
(11:52):
on that but I need to know how DOCA works.
I need to know the historical context stuff deferred action
but decades ago, like how did this program come to?
I need to know everything about it.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Louise felt like this was his moment. All those sleepless
nights studying the mechanics of deferred action would finally pay off.
He joined the battle as the expert on the subject,
but it was a fine line. The stakes are now
suddenly higher because even though he wasn't the face of
(12:23):
the case, it was like he was defending himself in court.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
I actually went to law school specifically not wanting to
do immigration law. I had told myself I'm not going
to do immigration law because it had just it was
just all over my life and I lived it, and
I think it's almost like almost like a fear of
confrontation too. It had impacted every aspect that my life, had,
had separated me from one of my parents and had
(12:52):
stopped me from doing so many things that I almost
just didn't want to face it. Not only had I
lived it, but I had like really studied it. I
had really really studied it on my own because I
really like, I wanted to know how it worked, and
I needed to know how it worked because I needed
to know how this impacted my family. So I really
(13:13):
nerded out on some of the historical parts of it.
And everybody else who was there, you know, they were
civil rights attorneys, some of them were corporate attorneys, but
they didn't have time to get caught up to speed
on this, and so when they needed someone to have
these hearings, They're like, is you you have to go?
And it was a little bit like it kind of
(13:33):
felt like that movie Slim Dog Millionaire, a little bit
like a lot of it is because of my lived experience,
because I had already gone through it, and then I
just get placed in the situation where I'm like, this
is where your knowledge goes.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Theresa's DOCA status gave him a keen insight that no
other person had. He could speak from experience because he
lived it.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
And so I'm at the court and this is like
in California, like at the first level, and I'm answering
all the judges questions and then he starts asking me
about like how does this actually work? Like you apply
and then what happens. I'm like, you go in, you
take your fingerprints, they ask you a few questions. These
are the questions they ask you. They take your photo.
Your photo's got to look like this.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Louise was sounding like a DOCA scholar, but no one
else in the courtroom knew Louise had DOCA.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
At one point, he's like, wait, wait, how do you
know this? Like, how do you know that this is
how it works? I told him, like I went through it.
I'm a doctor recipient myself, and I went through it.
And I think it dawned on him like, Oh, there's
somebody right in front of me who this matters to.
This isn't just an abstract legal issue or something that
is going to impact the people outside. This is going
to impact somebody who's arguing in my court right now.
(14:49):
And there was a change in tone and feeling that
it happened when he found out that I was a
doctor recipient. I think for the better.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Louise's DOCA status was like his secret weapon and added
weight to his case. It made it that much more real.
After that hearing, there were signs that Louis and his
team might actually have a fighting chance.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Doesn't mean that we've won yet, but we have a
strong likelihood of winning the case. And so because we
made a showing that we have a strong likelihood of
winning the case that the government ending DOCA was unlawful.
In other words, the way that they ended it wasn't right.
The judge gave us what is called an injunction, which
means that he put an order that essentially stops the
government from ending the program.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
So things are looking up for DACA, but this is
just one judge at the state level. After the break,
Louis is going to have to convince the Supreme Court
that ending DACA would be catastrophic. DOCA was on life support,
(16:21):
but it wasn't dead yet, and the fight in the
courts was just ramping up. The injunction was like a
shard of glass stabbing DACA and heard, but it was
also what was keeping it from bleeding out entirely.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
The government wasn't happy about that. They weren't happy about
the injunction, and so that's how the case got fast tracked,
because then they appealed to that injunction, that court order
that said you have to keep the DOCA program at
least partially alive. So that goes up to the Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeals, and that goes up in May
of twenty nineteen. It goes up to the Ninth Circuit
(17:04):
Court of Appeals in Los Angeles, and the arguments are
presented there. Eventually, the Ninth Circuit rules in our favor,
unanimously in our favor, and again rejects the government's arguments
that the way that the end of the DOCA program
was correct and lawful.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
It was in the Ninth Circuit Court where Luis and
his team started to unravel the human elements of this
hearing from DOCA recipients, hoping, like the dreamer activists before him,
that if people just heard their stories, they'd understand why
the program matters.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
And I remember telling the plaintiffs that I called my friends.
There were my friends that I called it. I was like, hey,
you want to be part of this lawsuit? And I
told them, I was like, I can't guarantee that we're
going to win, but I can guarantee you that they're
going to know our stories. Guarantee you that much, and
I'm going to push for it, and I felt a
responsibility amongst the team there that that wasn't lost on us.
(18:06):
And it felt like I felt very proud that that
strategy had worked because it seemed like the Ninth Circuit
really took it to heart. So the Ninth Circuit rules
in our favor again. The government now takes it up
to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Now, Luis was entering the biggest national stage for legal proceedings.
It had moved so fast that he couldn't really take
it all in. But when he arrived in DC, his
heart swelled when he saw the overwhelming support for DOCA.
It fueled him.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
There was a big gathering of all sorts of folks
right pro and against DACA, but the folks that showed
up on support of DACA. I mean there was thousands
of people there, people who had walked from New York
as a form of a demonstration that they were supporting DOCA.
The day of the hearing was was an amazing day
(19:06):
because we really felt that the you know, the support
from the community.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
In the previous episodes, we heard Luis's story. He's come
a long way from being an undocumented lawyer that couldn't
practice to representing people like him in the Supreme Court.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
It was very surreal to me because I went to
law school before there was DACA, and I remember being
told like, hey, you might graduate from law school, but
you can't practice law, man, because you don't you know,
you have obstacles to go through because of your status.
And so I when I remember, you know, for almost
finishing law school thinking like, man, I'm not even going
(19:50):
to get to practice law, to now being at the
Supreme Court, like, I get really choked up about it.
I'm not going to lie, like even still when I
think about it, because I had the honor to help
represent my community and a community that's very near and
dear to me, and you know, the doc recipients and
the trust that they gave me about it, I'll say this,
(20:11):
it went by so fast. We get in there, and I,
you know, we it's a lot of spinning plates that
we have to keep our eye on. There's a lot
that we have to kind of make sure that we're considering.
And so I feel very focused like making sure that
we have the eye enterprize and and that's kind of
all that mattered at that point, which is a little
(20:32):
bittersweet because it kind of in retrospect, I kind of
wish I would have taken a little bit more time
to kind of sit there and take it in. But
I was almost there for like with with one thing
in mind, right, like this is the focus.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
After the hearing, things went silent, Louise was starting to
get anxious. He developed a routine. As soon as he
woke up, he checked his phone, hoping to see the announcement. Nothing.
He logged onto his computer, clicking, refreshed constantly, over and
(21:09):
over and over and over. It was like that for weeks,
obsessively refreshing, hoping to find out Doca's fate.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
And I've been doing that for for weeks. I've been
doing that, And the day the decision came in, I
planned to wake up early and I like overslept a
little bit, and so the decision, when the decision was announced,
like I was just waking up and I just figured, like,
it's not going to come today because I've been checking
literally every day for weeks, and it just felt like
(21:41):
any other day, Like that's how much I was not
planning on it, at least not that day. And so
then I see the decision comes out, in my heart
just drops and I'm on my phone looking at it,
because usually I'm on my laptop, but I was running late.
I've overslept, and so I'm going through my phone and
I'm trying to get it load. And I see that
(22:01):
the decisions there, the way in which the government terminated
the program was lawful, and so that the Ninth Circus
decision stands. I could not believe it. I had to
like read it over and over and over again just
to make sure that that that's that that I made
sense of it. And I immediately called one of the
(22:22):
other attorneys who was working on the case, and I
was like, did you get the decision? And you know,
he's very emotional. He goes, we won, we won, we won.
And that's that's how it was confirmed to me, because
I was like, I must not be reading this right.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
After a hard battle in the courts, Louise and his
team beat the Trump administration and brought DOCA back to life.
It took a lawyer with docca's status to ensure its survival,
but Louise is the first to acknowledge that DOACA exists
because of the fight by dreamers, and it wasn't just
some handout.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
What's important. I think to know if nothing else about
DOCCA is that it was not a gift from them,
President Obama. It's not like you woke up one day
and said, here's DACA. The reason that DOCA exists is
because community activists and immigrants rights activists like really pushed
Obama during his re election year and kept his feet
(23:18):
to the fire and called him the deporter in chief
and all that. And we know now from his latest
book that like that really got to him, That really
got to him, and he didn't He didn't like that.
And so DOCCA was a political concession after a sustained,
sustained and direct activism. And so that's why DOCCA is
so important to the immigrant rights movement, because it was
heart fought and earned.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
The win was monumental. I remember exactly where I was
the day the decision came down from the court. I
traveled to the affluent Alley neighborhood of Pacific Palisades. I'd
gone there to talk to a DOCCA recipient who also
owned a popular taco truck out there. We were both
expecting it to be a bad day for DACA holders,
(24:02):
but it turned out to be the opposite.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
I am a DACA recipient.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Today, I feel relieved, and I feel more energized than
ever to continue with this fight for our rights and for.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
A chance for a better future.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
That's rolod Fo Barrientos, the owner of Taco Truck Garcia signor.
I highly recommend the fish Tacos if you ever get
a chance to get out there. I'm not gonna lie.
I was relieved. Or roloada fole that day could have
gone the other way, but it didn't. Instead, there were
(24:43):
almost a million roloada fols across the United States, all
of whom must have felt a collective sense of relief
that morning from Luis's fight to reinstate DACA, people who
contribute so much to this country, not just as our
neighbors and community members, but I'm talking billions of dollars.
(25:06):
The Supreme Court may have ruled that the Trump administration
ended DACA the wrong way, but by that point DACA
had basically proved too big to fail. In other words,
the amount of money DACA beneficiaries contribute to the economy
might have had something to do with the courts ruling.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Fortune five hundred companies got together and collectively signed on
to a brief I'm talking about like Airbnb, Yahoo, like
a lot of them. There's like a whole list of
them saying if DACA ends, like, let us tell you
about the economic impact.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
If conservatives only understand profit incentives, Well, next time we'll
get into the huge stacks of cash DAKA folks bring
to the economy.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Out of the Shadows Dreamers is as Medo Production in
partnership with Iheart's Michael Duda Podcast Network. It's created, posted,
and executive produced by me, Patti Rodriguez, and Eric Galindo.
This show is written by Sessa Hernandez and executive produced
by Jaselle Banzis. Our supervising producer is Arlene Santana. It's
(26:26):
produced and edited by Brianna Flores. Our associate producer is
Claudia Marti Gorena Down the sign mixing and mastering by
Jessica Cranecicch and a special thanks to all our Dreamers.
Remember to subscribe to the podcast and share it. For
more Michael Duda Podcast listen to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(26:47):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Attorney Luis Cortejomero gets a call. The other person on
the other end of the phone says, his name is
Tony Ramirez. He's calling on behalf of his brother Daniel, who,
like Louise, is a doctor recipient and he just got
picked up by eyes. He might be the first doctor recipient,
(00:48):
the first Dreamer arrested by the Trump administration. Confused, Louise asks,
did he miss up somehow? Was he in jail? Did
he lose his DOCA? No, they just picked him up.
The voice on the phone says it's a Friday, and
(01:14):
Daniel's on the verge of having to spend the weekend
in a detention center in Washington. His brother Tony tells
Louise that he was in their first call. All the
other lawyers told Tony he'd have to wait until Monday.
Louise can't get the image of Daniel, a fellow DOCA
recipient forced to be in captivity for several days, out
(01:37):
of his head. That could happen to me, he thinks,
So Louise drives to the detention center. He tells the
front desk that he's there to meet his client, Daniel
Ramirez for a second the idea that they might arrest
him to runs across Louise's mind. After a while, they
(02:03):
leave Louise into a room where Daniel is waiting. Louise
can see that Daniel is scared and very confused. They
were looking for somebody, Daniel says in a soft voice.
They were looking for my dad, but they just assumed
I was him. They didn't even ask me any questions.
(02:26):
They just put me in cuffs because of my tattoos.
Louise notices the letters BCS tatted on Daniel's arm. It
stands for Baja California, so the initials of Daniel's birth estate.
The ICE agents are calling it a gang tattoo. It's
(02:47):
an intimidation tactic and it's working. Louise tries to stop
Daniel from panicking and says everything's gonna be okay, but
Louise is not sure what's happening. DOCA was supposed to
protect people like Daniel, people like Louis two, but in
(03:09):
the following months, the Trump administration is going to strip
Daniel of his protected status and fight to deport him,
and also to end DAKA for everyone, and as far
as Louise is concerned, there's nothing okay about that. I'm
(03:30):
Patti Rodriguez, i'mmeric G.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Lindo.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
This is Out of the Shadows, a podcast about America's
tangled history of immigration. Last season, we tackled Ronald Reagan's
nineteen eighty six Amnisty Act. This season, we're tracing the
origins of DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a
contentious executive order to protect undocumented young people from being.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Deported issued by former President Barack Obama in twenty twelve.
DACA was meant to be a temporary gap on a
broken immigration system. It was like putting a bucket under
a leaky roof. But with multiple Supreme Court challenges and
looming presidential elections, the roof feels like it may collapse
at any moment, impacting the US economy and American culture
(04:17):
as we know it. Meanwhile, the future of millions of
lives hangs in the balance.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Welcome to Out of the Shadows, Dreamers.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
All right.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
So it's twenty seventeen Trump's first year in office, and
he's already killed DABA, Obama's short lived program that would
have extended deportation protection to undocumented immigrant parents of American
born children. Then, in September, the Trump administration makes its
(05:04):
next move on immigration. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announces the
end of DACA.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Good morning, I'm here today to announce that the program
known as DACA that was effectuated under the Obama administration
is being rescinded.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
The move is led by Sessions and then Senior adviser
Stephen Miller, whose fingerprints were on some of Trump's harshest decisions.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
The policy was implemented unilaterally, to great controversy and legal concern.
In other words, the executive branch, through DACA, deliberately sought
to achieve what the legislative branch specifically refused to authorize
on multiple occasions. Such an open ended circumvention of immigration
(05:56):
laws was an unconstitutional exercise of a authority by the
executive branch.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
In the same way that Obama uses executive power to
bring DACA to life, Trump used his to stick a
dagger it's beating heart. Just like that, hundreds of thousands
of dreamers were about to lose their work permits, their
way to make a living gone, or worse, that all
(06:28):
be deported. Trump's sudden decision raised all these questions, especially
for lawyers like Louis.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
We were still working on Daniel's case when when we
heard about the news about DOCA NY there was rumors
around there being a big immigration announcement being done and
that it was going to happen. I remember it was
like on a Friday, so we were all kind of
waiting to see what would happen Friday, and nothing happened,
And it wasn't until it was that following Monday where
(07:05):
then Attorney General Jeff Sessions came out and announced the.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Ending of DACA in Daniel's case from the top of
the show. He was stripped of his DAKA status, but
Louise and his team worked hard to reinstate it. The
case snowballed and made it to federal court.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
We were able to map out a legal blueprint as
to what is DACA illegally and how can the courts
defend it and what can the government do with it
and what can they do with it.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
When Louise got the federal judge to restore Daniel's DACA status,
it was a huge moment for Daniel. But that fight
was about to become much bigger than about one guy
with the Baja tattoo.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Hard Well.
Speaker 5 (07:57):
I had a great arte. Folks were talking a great
love for them. And people think in terms of children,
but they're really young adults. I have a love for
these people, and hopefully now Congress will be able to
help them and do it properly. And I can tell
you in speaking to members of Congress, they want to
be able to do something and do it right, and
(08:19):
really we have no choice. We have to be able
to do something. And I think it's going to work
out very well, and long term it's going to be
the right sellers.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
After the break, Louise takes on Trump.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Louis had one Daniel's case by proving that the Trump
administration couldn't just end for one person, so how could
they end it for hundreds of thousands of people? Luista
he stumbled onto the answer.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
We were able to defend DACA for an individual when
we felt like the government was acting unlawfully. Can we
scale this to defend all of DACA?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
His team cut wind of other suits against the administration,
none of which were representing DACA recipients.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
One of the things that we realized is that immediately
when that happened, there was some lawsuits that were filed
and we saw that the state of California filed the lawsuit.
We saw that the University of California system, the U
See Regents, you see Davis, UCLA, they filed the lawsuit,
but no one was filing a lawsuit on behalf of
the actual dreamers. And these stories are important to tell.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Worry that those people who were actually impacted by Trump's
policies weren't being represented, and his team saw an opportunity
to represent those voices. His team's early plans considered filing
the suit with Louise as the face of it, but
Louise wanted to work on the case rather than be
the case.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
And so I started calling doc recipients that I knew,
a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, and I wanted to
make sure that we had a cross representation of folks
and said I told them, Hey, we're trying to file
a lawsuit to try to stop this, and we need
people to be our plaintiffs, to be our clients. Do
you want to be this person? By the way, I
need to know tonight, So I'll give you time to
think about it right now, but I need to know
like later today. Uh, So I need to know in
(10:37):
a few hours, talk to whoever we need to talk to,
but it's going to We're going to file a lawsuit.
And six people said yes. We quickly started filing, putting
it together, and we filed. We filed a lawsuit on
behalf of the doctor recipients on a Wednesday, and by
that Monday, we were in court and things were moving fast.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Attorney to Sessions gave six months before the program would end,
so things were moving at lightning speed.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
And this team of people who were there there was
so there was a large team of people because now
we were with the state of California, we were with
the UC regions, and I was by far the youngest
person there. So I just assumed that people who were
older like would want to like argue the case and
you know, be in court and do whatever. And you know,
(11:30):
I was. I was just happy to be there. So
I just assumed that was going to happen. But the
judge in California said, you know, like, hey, this thing
is moving fast, and so we're gonna I remember one
time he said, We're going to have a court hearing
to see if I'm going to give an order to
keep the program in place, right the injunction that ultimately
kept the at least part of the doctor program alive
during this entire fight, because I want to hear it
(11:52):
on that but I need to know how DOCA works.
I need to know the historical context stuff deferred action
but decades ago, like how did this program come to?
I need to know everything about it.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Louise felt like this was his moment. All those sleepless
nights studying the mechanics of deferred action would finally pay off.
He joined the battle as the expert on the subject,
but it was a fine line. The stakes are now
suddenly higher because even though he wasn't the face of
(12:23):
the case, it was like he was defending himself in court.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
I actually went to law school specifically not wanting to
do immigration law. I had told myself I'm not going
to do immigration law because it had just it was
just all over my life and I lived it, and
I think it's almost like almost like a fear of
confrontation too. It had impacted every aspect that my life, had,
had separated me from one of my parents and had
(12:52):
stopped me from doing so many things that I almost
just didn't want to face it. Not only had I
lived it, but I had like really studied it. I
had really really studied it on my own because I
really like, I wanted to know how it worked, and
I needed to know how it worked because I needed
to know how this impacted my family. So I really
(13:13):
nerded out on some of the historical parts of it.
And everybody else who was there, you know, they were
civil rights attorneys, some of them were corporate attorneys, but
they didn't have time to get caught up to speed
on this, and so when they needed someone to have
these hearings, They're like, is you you have to go?
And it was a little bit like it kind of
(13:33):
felt like that movie Slim Dog Millionaire, a little bit
like a lot of it is because of my lived experience,
because I had already gone through it, and then I
just get placed in the situation where I'm like, this
is where your knowledge goes.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Theresa's DOCA status gave him a keen insight that no
other person had. He could speak from experience because he
lived it.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
And so I'm at the court and this is like
in California, like at the first level, and I'm answering
all the judges questions and then he starts asking me
about like how does this actually work? Like you apply
and then what happens. I'm like, you go in, you
take your fingerprints, they ask you a few questions. These
are the questions they ask you. They take your photo.
Your photo's got to look like this.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Louise was sounding like a DOCA scholar, but no one
else in the courtroom knew Louise had DOCA.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
At one point, he's like, wait, wait, how do you
know this? Like, how do you know that this is
how it works? I told him, like I went through it.
I'm a doctor recipient myself, and I went through it.
And I think it dawned on him like, Oh, there's
somebody right in front of me who this matters to.
This isn't just an abstract legal issue or something that
is going to impact the people outside. This is going
to impact somebody who's arguing in my court right now.
(14:49):
And there was a change in tone and feeling that
it happened when he found out that I was a
doctor recipient. I think for the better.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Louise's DOCA status was like his secret weapon and added
weight to his case. It made it that much more real.
After that hearing, there were signs that Louis and his
team might actually have a fighting chance.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Doesn't mean that we've won yet, but we have a
strong likelihood of winning the case. And so because we
made a showing that we have a strong likelihood of
winning the case that the government ending DOCA was unlawful.
In other words, the way that they ended it wasn't right.
The judge gave us what is called an injunction, which
means that he put an order that essentially stops the
government from ending the program.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
So things are looking up for DACA, but this is
just one judge at the state level. After the break,
Louis is going to have to convince the Supreme Court
that ending DACA would be catastrophic. DOCA was on life support,
(16:21):
but it wasn't dead yet, and the fight in the
courts was just ramping up. The injunction was like a
shard of glass stabbing DACA and heard, but it was
also what was keeping it from bleeding out entirely.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
The government wasn't happy about that. They weren't happy about
the injunction, and so that's how the case got fast tracked,
because then they appealed to that injunction, that court order
that said you have to keep the DOCA program at
least partially alive. So that goes up to the Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeals, and that goes up in May
of twenty nineteen. It goes up to the Ninth Circuit
(17:04):
Court of Appeals in Los Angeles, and the arguments are
presented there. Eventually, the Ninth Circuit rules in our favor,
unanimously in our favor, and again rejects the government's arguments
that the way that the end of the DOCA program
was correct and lawful.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
It was in the Ninth Circuit Court where Luis and
his team started to unravel the human elements of this
hearing from DOCA recipients, hoping, like the dreamer activists before him,
that if people just heard their stories, they'd understand why
the program matters.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
And I remember telling the plaintiffs that I called my friends.
There were my friends that I called it. I was like, hey,
you want to be part of this lawsuit? And I
told them, I was like, I can't guarantee that we're
going to win, but I can guarantee you that they're
going to know our stories. Guarantee you that much, and
I'm going to push for it, and I felt a
responsibility amongst the team there that that wasn't lost on us.
(18:06):
And it felt like I felt very proud that that
strategy had worked because it seemed like the Ninth Circuit
really took it to heart. So the Ninth Circuit rules
in our favor again. The government now takes it up
to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Now, Luis was entering the biggest national stage for legal proceedings.
It had moved so fast that he couldn't really take
it all in. But when he arrived in DC, his
heart swelled when he saw the overwhelming support for DOCA.
It fueled him.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
There was a big gathering of all sorts of folks
right pro and against DACA, but the folks that showed
up on support of DACA. I mean there was thousands
of people there, people who had walked from New York
as a form of a demonstration that they were supporting DOCA.
The day of the hearing was was an amazing day
(19:06):
because we really felt that the you know, the support
from the community.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
In the previous episodes, we heard Luis's story. He's come
a long way from being an undocumented lawyer that couldn't
practice to representing people like him in the Supreme Court.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
It was very surreal to me because I went to
law school before there was DACA, and I remember being
told like, hey, you might graduate from law school, but
you can't practice law, man, because you don't you know,
you have obstacles to go through because of your status.
And so I when I remember, you know, for almost
finishing law school thinking like, man, I'm not even going
(19:50):
to get to practice law, to now being at the
Supreme Court, like, I get really choked up about it.
I'm not going to lie, like even still when I
think about it, because I had the honor to help
represent my community and a community that's very near and
dear to me, and you know, the doc recipients and
the trust that they gave me about it, I'll say this,
(20:11):
it went by so fast. We get in there, and I,
you know, we it's a lot of spinning plates that
we have to keep our eye on. There's a lot
that we have to kind of make sure that we're considering.
And so I feel very focused like making sure that
we have the eye enterprize and and that's kind of
all that mattered at that point, which is a little
(20:32):
bittersweet because it kind of in retrospect, I kind of
wish I would have taken a little bit more time
to kind of sit there and take it in. But
I was almost there for like with with one thing
in mind, right, like this is the focus.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
After the hearing, things went silent, Louise was starting to
get anxious. He developed a routine. As soon as he
woke up, he checked his phone, hoping to see the announcement. Nothing.
He logged onto his computer, clicking, refreshed constantly, over and
(21:09):
over and over and over. It was like that for weeks,
obsessively refreshing, hoping to find out Doca's fate.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
And I've been doing that for for weeks. I've been
doing that, And the day the decision came in, I
planned to wake up early and I like overslept a
little bit, and so the decision, when the decision was announced,
like I was just waking up and I just figured, like,
it's not going to come today because I've been checking
literally every day for weeks, and it just felt like
(21:41):
any other day, Like that's how much I was not
planning on it, at least not that day. And so
then I see the decision comes out, in my heart
just drops and I'm on my phone looking at it,
because usually I'm on my laptop, but I was running late.
I've overslept, and so I'm going through my phone and
I'm trying to get it load. And I see that
(22:01):
the decisions there, the way in which the government terminated
the program was lawful, and so that the Ninth Circus
decision stands. I could not believe it. I had to
like read it over and over and over again just
to make sure that that that's that that I made
sense of it. And I immediately called one of the
(22:22):
other attorneys who was working on the case, and I
was like, did you get the decision? And you know,
he's very emotional. He goes, we won, we won, we won.
And that's that's how it was confirmed to me, because
I was like, I must not be reading this right.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
After a hard battle in the courts, Louise and his
team beat the Trump administration and brought DOCA back to life.
It took a lawyer with docca's status to ensure its survival,
but Louise is the first to acknowledge that DOACA exists
because of the fight by dreamers, and it wasn't just
some handout.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
What's important. I think to know if nothing else about
DOCCA is that it was not a gift from them,
President Obama. It's not like you woke up one day
and said, here's DACA. The reason that DOCA exists is
because community activists and immigrants rights activists like really pushed
Obama during his re election year and kept his feet
(23:18):
to the fire and called him the deporter in chief
and all that. And we know now from his latest
book that like that really got to him, That really
got to him, and he didn't He didn't like that.
And so DOCCA was a political concession after a sustained,
sustained and direct activism. And so that's why DOCCA is
so important to the immigrant rights movement, because it was
heart fought and earned.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
The win was monumental. I remember exactly where I was
the day the decision came down from the court. I
traveled to the affluent Alley neighborhood of Pacific Palisades. I'd
gone there to talk to a DOCCA recipient who also
owned a popular taco truck out there. We were both
expecting it to be a bad day for DACA holders,
(24:02):
but it turned out to be the opposite.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
I am a DACA recipient.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Today, I feel relieved, and I feel more energized than
ever to continue with this fight for our rights and for.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
A chance for a better future.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
That's rolod Fo Barrientos, the owner of Taco Truck Garcia signor.
I highly recommend the fish Tacos if you ever get
a chance to get out there. I'm not gonna lie.
I was relieved. Or roloada fole that day could have
gone the other way, but it didn't. Instead, there were
(24:43):
almost a million roloada fols across the United States, all
of whom must have felt a collective sense of relief
that morning from Luis's fight to reinstate DACA, people who
contribute so much to this country, not just as our
neighbors and community members, but I'm talking billions of dollars.
(25:06):
The Supreme Court may have ruled that the Trump administration
ended DACA the wrong way, but by that point DACA
had basically proved too big to fail. In other words,
the amount of money DACA beneficiaries contribute to the economy
might have had something to do with the courts ruling.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Fortune five hundred companies got together and collectively signed on
to a brief I'm talking about like Airbnb, Yahoo, like
a lot of them. There's like a whole list of
them saying if DACA ends, like, let us tell you
about the economic impact.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
If conservatives only understand profit incentives, Well, next time we'll
get into the huge stacks of cash DAKA folks bring
to the economy.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Out of the Shadows Dreamers is as Medo Production in
partnership with Iheart's Michael Duda Podcast Network. It's created, posted,
and executive produced by me, Patti Rodriguez, and Eric Galindo.
This show is written by Sessa Hernandez and executive produced
by Jaselle Banzis. Our supervising producer is Arlene Santana. It's
(26:26):
produced and edited by Brianna Flores. Our associate producer is
Claudia Marti Gorena Down the sign mixing and mastering by
Jessica Cranecicch and a special thanks to all our Dreamers.
Remember to subscribe to the podcast and share it. For
more Michael Duda Podcast listen to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(26:47):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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