‘Community organizing means showing up’: Lawyer who fought for DACA in the Supreme Court urges undocumented immigrants to prepare for a future without it

Luis Cortes, the lawyer who argued before the Supreme Court in 2019 to defend a visa program allowing undocumented immigrants to temporarily reside legally in the United States, is now urging recipients to prepare for a future without it.

Cortes, an immigration attorney for Novo Legal Group LLC in Seattle, spoke at Gonzaga University last Wednesday about the uncertain future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The people who came to the country through this program are colloquially called “dreamers.”

In preparation for President-elect Donald Trump, Cortes said he and Alejandra Perez, a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington, plan to hold weekly community meetings for support and resources across the state. At the local level, groups like Latinos en Spokane have also been preparing for these challenges.

“We’re lucky in Washington that we have a lot of privileges already, like driver’s licenses are not contingent on DACA, professional licenses are not contingent on DACA, but we want to also make sure that we have pipelines to certain career paths,” said Cortes, a DACA recipient.

The Obama administration created the DACA Program in 2012 to provide renewable two-year permits allowing young people brought to the U.S. as children to work, study and be protected from deportation.

In 2017, the Trump administration moved to rescind the program.

In response, Cortes became the first undocumented attorney in 2019 to argue before the Supreme Court, defending DACA after filing a lawsuit on behalf of recipients nationwide.

“When the Supreme Court took the case, there were two questions that they wanted answered. One was ‘Is the DACA program legal?’ And two, ‘Can the Trump administration end the program the way that they ended it?’ ” Cortes said.

The Supreme Court ruled that the Trump Administration had unlawfully ended the program and sent the case back to the Fifth Circuit Court, where it has since remained in limbo.

Because the Court never addressed the core question of DACA’s legality, however, the program is likely to face new challenges.

As of Dec. 31, 2022, there are roughly 580,000 active DACA recipients across the country, with an estimated 13,530 living in Washington, one of the few states willing to offer resources and support for undocumented immigrants.

Michael Baumgartner, the newly elected congressman from Spokane, spoke on immigration issues in Eastern Washington during his candidacy and seemed to favor a reform for some visa programs, including for guest workers, skilled workers and “well-educated, highly capable and talented folks” like conservative South African-born tech mogul Elon Musk – although didn’t specify what visa programs this would include.

When it comes to undocumented immigrants, however, he has said policies such as “Remain in Mexico” need to be reinstated and the sanctuary city experiment ended.

Cortes said it’s important for people in and outside of Washington to tap into pre-existing organizations like Rising Dreamers, Scholar Fund or United We Dream to understand how to organize – and not just post on social media.

“Community organizing means showing up and being consistent about it, not just when it’s convenient, but to actually be committed to it,” Cortes said. “That’s what has worked in the past, not just for dreamers, but for other civil rights movements.”

Jennyfer Mesa, executive director of Latinos en Spokane, said her group has been preparing, even before the results, and is working with other state agencies, such as leaders from the Washington Working Act, on planning, defense and political education.

Some of their priorities include training on immigration rights, advocating for unemployment insurance for undocumented workers, strengthening legal and community defense, and protecting health insurance for immigrants.

“We want to ramp up our efforts, on doing more information and going back to what we used to do, which is a lot of deportation defense, providing ‘Know Your Rights’ information,” Mesa said.

Latinos en Spokane got its start through advocacy work in 2016, right around Donald Trump’s first presidency.

The organization started off with volunteers, including Mesa, and others in the community who wanted to spread awareness on deportation defense and ICE arrests in Spokane.

Officially established in 2017, it continued to address key issues, including racial profiling from U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in 2019, who were stopping Greyhound bus passengers in Spokane to question them about their immigration status.

The group’s advocacy resulted in new laws in Spokane limiting Border Patrol’s ability to search buses and access nonpublic city property, as well as the Keep Washington Working Act, which strengthened protections for immigrants across the state.

“None of the rights that we have today were created just because they were given to us,” Mesa said.

“We had to fight for them, and that comes from everything from worker rights to housing rights to human rights to our health.”

United We Dream, a nonprofit immigrant advocacy organization, was marching and rallying for immigrant rights as early as 2008, around the beginning of Barack Obama’s first presidency, as a way to unify immigrant youth across the country after Obama made many promises to the immigrant community.

As time passed without significant progress on immigration reform – instead, millions even faced deportation under the Obama Administration – communities across the country protested.

They organized marches, holding signs directed at Obama with messages like “Deporter-in-Chief” and “Let us be the change.”

With their push, in the summer of 2012, Obama announced an executive action for DACA, granting relief to thousands of undocumented families across the country.

“It’s really important to know that DACA was not a gift from Obama,” Cortes said. “It was a political concession that was made after students got together and did the work.

“They pushed and pushed and pushed until they got the executive branch of the U.S. government to continue.”

Mesa also said she doesn’t expect ICE arrests and racial profiling to go anywhere, and that their advocacy work is going to be crucial at the local level, considering Idaho is only 20 minutes away without state policies protecting undocumented immigrants.

“We have a lot of people who live and work within both parts of the state, and as soon as you are driving while Brown in Idaho, and you cross that border, as soon as you have an accent there, their police will call Border Patrol,” Mesa said. “… I would advise immigrants and people who are at risk to not travel to those areas. It’s very hostile, and Border Patrol is very present there.”

Idaho has 2,330 active DACA recipients and 35,000 undocumented immigrants.

It doesn’t have any state policies to protect the group, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

In a news release this fall, Kootenai County Sheriff Robert Norris said “rewarding illegal aliens with a Driver’s License will only encourage more illegal migration into Idaho.”

But Cortes said that, even with individuals and state officials’ concerns throughout the state, Idaho’s approach is more complex.

He said that while state-level support remains uncertain, institutions and smaller communities can often step in to offer resources and assistance, such as with scholarships and community organizing through clubs.

“We’re hoping that catches on and that Idaho will continue to support its community despite what the federal government wants,” Cortes said.

Norris didn’t respond to The Spokesman-Review’s request for a comment.

Mesa said Latinos en Spokane will continue leading free immigration clinics, both through its partnership with Gonzaga University and through its own legal department, Poder Legal.

She said the group is also accredited by the Department of Justice, which allows it to provide legal immigration services without the need for an attorney.

“That helps us with all of our cases,” Mesa said. “The best way that we can support our community is through legal action.”

Cortes said while he continues to work on community organizing across the state, it’s important to contact nearby nonprofits and schools – even if they don’t have the resources – as a starting point to help you get connected to the right people.

“And if you’re a student, look at what student groups are doing work, and tap into other schools too,” Cortes said. “So, for example, if students at Gonzaga are wanting to organize, and there’s two or three people, look at what WSU is doing. Reach out to them and say, ‘Hey, can we start a coalition between these two schools?’ and try to build a community that way.”