From a small courtroom in South Texas to late nights in Madrid, this is the story of how borders, people, and purpose shaped my life, and why immigration law became the language through which I understand the world.
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When I think about where this all started, I picture myself as a little kid in an oversized gray T-shirt, sunburned from a trip to Mexico, sitting in the back of a courtroom in South Texas. My dad had brought me to watch my “tío,” a local judge, read people their rights. I was small enough that my feet didn’t touch the floor from the bench I was sitting on, but old enough to understand that something important was happening.
Rows of people were brought in, one after another, and my uncle’s voice filled the room, steady and formal. It was the first time I saw how the law could decide the direction of someone’s life in a matter of minutes. I didn’t have the words for it then, but I felt the weight of power and fairness. The law was more than rules on paper; it was a language that could either protect or destroy.
My dad was a Chicano from Chicago, the son of Mexican immigrants who never forgot what it meant to be underestimated. He was a radical in the best and most complicated sense of the word, part philosopher and part contrarian. He questioned everything: systems, hierarchies, even everyday routines. But underneath his skepticism was something simple. He believed people should be treated with dignity and justice. Period.
My mom was the opposite in temperament, though equally strong. She carried her Monterrey (“Regia”) accent proudly, with a warmth that could disarm anyone. She taught me how to adapt and how to find common ground without losing yourself. Between the two of them I learned rebellion and empathy, courage and patience, the two qualities that, in hindsight, have defined everything I have done.
Growing up in the Rio Grande Valley was like living in a permanent in-between. On one side of the bridge was McAllen, neat and predictable. On the other, Monterrey, full of life and color. Every summer we drove through the night, past endless stretches of desert and checkpoints, until the smell of gasoline and street food filled the air. I remember men at stoplights breathing fire for tips, laughter echoing through a small house in Colonia Mitras Centro (that at one point in time held my mother, her five siblings, and my grandparents), and many, many tacos sudados (literal translation, “sweaty tacos”).
When I started law school, I thought I might end up in politics. I wanted to represent the Valley, to be the kind of leader my community rarely saw. But I soon realized that the real work, the work that changes lives, does not always happen on a stage. It happens in the quiet moments, across desks covered with files, inside small offices where people bring you their hopes bundled in a dossier.
The law called to me not as a career but as a way to understand systems and how to make them bend toward fairness. I gravitated to immigration and criminal law because both dealt with judgment, identity, and belonging. I worked with the Texas Innocence Project and the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, where we handled a Fourth Amendment case that led to new training for border officers. For the first time, I saw what legal action could do when it gave a voice to people who had none.
After getting my license, I was sent to Tijuana to help a group of twenty-six migrant workers obtain H-2A visas. They had traveled from all over Latin America for a chance to work legally in the United States. What struck me most was that most of them did not want to stay permanently; they wanted to earn money, return home, and build something. That trip changed me. It stripped away the abstractions of “policy” and “law” and replaced them with faces, names, and stories.
Over the years, I have worked with almost every kind of immigration case: corporate, federal litigaiton, global immigraiton, humanitarian, family-based, and removal defense. Some moments stay with you forever.
I still think about the woman I represented in Houston who had survived domestic violence. She came into my office every day with her young son waiting in the car while we worked through her application under the Violence Against Women Act. I was twenty-four, unsure of myself, still figuring out how to be a lawyer. When her case was approved, she cried and hugged me. I realized that a law license, however new or imperfect the hands that hold it, can alter the course of a life.
Then there is the corporate side, the RFEs that make you question your sanity, the nights spent researching obscure regulations, the quiet satisfaction of winning against an arbitrary bureaucracy. Each victory, whether for a single mother or a multinational CEO, carries the same message: people’s lives depend on this.
But immigration law also exposes you to the limits of the system. I have seen how it fails to recognize economic migration as a legitimate form of movement and how it forces people to fit into narrow categories that do not reflect their realities. Spain, where I now live, has a more pragmatic model, one that recognizes migration as a social and economic necessity. The results are visible: a growing economy, a richer culture, a sense of practicality that feels missing in the United States. https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/how-spain-became-europes-fastest-growing-major-economy
When I meet a client now, what I want them to feel is trust, that I understand what they are going through not just professionally but personally. I have stood in visa lines in Europe, translating and processing my own documents, wondering what a decision from a faceless official will mean for my life. I have been on both sides of the glass.
What frustrates me most about how immigration is discussed is the lack of empathy. People still treat it as a threat rather than the foundation of civilization. Every nation, every culture, every innovation is built on movement. We have all been immigrants, whether we remember it or not.
If there is a single idea that runs through everything, it is that no one should be relegated to a second-class existence.nor deprived of due process. That belief started with my parents, hardened in the Valley, and became my compass as a lawyer. I fear these ideas are losing their meaning in the world, but I’m here for the longhaul.
So, why Spain? The honest answer is that life took me to Europe for very personal reasons, and when one chapter ended, I realized I did not want to leave this continent. I had found something I had not expected: a sense of peace, of rhythm, of connection. I built friendships across countries, found joy in the mix of languages, and rediscovered what community means. So, I embarked on yet another immigraiton journey, one that was at once difficult, but all too familiar.
On Friday nights in Madrid, I often go to Parque del Oeste. The air smells like trees and the music floats over the grass. Salsa, bachata, and merengue pulse from a large speaker that has been wheeled in. People dance in circles, and for a few hours no one asks where anyone is from. I have met Colombians, Venezuelans, Peruvians, Spaniards, and Mexicans, all moving to the same beat. We’re all far away from home, and yet, the whole experience reminds me of home: that borderless energy of the Valley where everything and everyone mixed.
Movement has always defined me. Geography changes, languages change, even the reasons for leaving and returning change. What does not change is the search for belonging, that universal instinct to find a place where you can breathe freely and still feel seen. Immigration law gave me a way to make sense of that instinct, to turn it into a compass, and more importantly, a purpose.
