A Day in the Life of an Immigration Lawyer… Elise de Castillo

Immigrant ARC is running a series of blog posts interspersed throughout the year featuring legal representatives working in our member organizations. These are some of the frontline workers of the immigration world, fighting around the clock to defend our communities and keep a measure of justice alive for all those who seek to call America home.

Elise de Castillo is the executive director of the Central American Refugee Center in Hempstead, New York, which serves immigrant communities on Long Island. . She graduated from the University of Wisconsin - Parkside and got her J.D. from Hofstra University School of Law. She was recently interviewed by Ben Rotko, a writer with the Immigrant Advocates Response Collaborative. The following is an edited transcript.

Ben Rotko: What made you want it to get into immigration law and in this area specifically as well?

Elise de Castillo: In college, I spent a lot of time working and studying abroad, particularly with communities that were marginalized within their own countries. For many of the folks that I worked with abroad the dream, the way to escape their marginalization was to come to the United States. And I decided that the best way to continue to serve these communities domestically was by becoming an immigration attorney.

I wanted to be a lawyer since I was seven years old. I still very clearly remember sitting in the backseat of my parents’ hunter green Mercury Villager and asking my mom, “what are the two best professions? And what are the two best universities?” I was a very strange seven-year-old. She said, “well, doctor, lawyer, Harvard, Yale.” And that was it. That was the defining moment for my seven-year-old self. Law was always the goal, but then the immigration piece came out of my work abroad.

Ben Rotko: Nassau and Suffolk counties were third and fifth for child refugee resettlement. I know our area is a hotbed for immigrants, but why this area to begin with, and why for refugees specifically?

Elise de Castillo: The history of Central American migration to Long Island started back in the 1980s when CARECEN was founded, there were civil wars in Central America during that decade. People migrate to where they have family, and what starts as one or two people can become a very large community. The number one sending country for immigrants on Long Island is El Salvador.

Ben Rotko: The majority of people whose background is from Central America in Port Washington live the village of Manorhaven, and situations like this are prevalent throughout Long Island. A town might on paper seem to be more racially diverse than its neighbor, but it's still very segregated within itself. How do you think that we can address this?

Elise de Castillo: That's a really big question. Integration is a challenge, especially in a region like Long Island, where you have towns like Levittown, for example, with their history of racial segregation. You know the concept of NIMBY, “not in my backyard.” It’s fine for them to be here, but in Manorhaven, not in the rest of Port Washington.

I think that it is a long-term cultural shift, to be honest, Because receiving communities are not always receptive to their new American neighbors. The longer you are around a community that is different from yours, the more you become accustomed to it.

The policy part is obviously driven by politics and politics is driven by voting. One of the great things that we do at CARECEN is we have a really robust citizenship program. Over the course of the past six years, we've helped more than 5,000 people apply for citizenship. When you become a U.S. citizen, what do you do? You get to vote. And when you vote you elect people who represent you, who represent the causes that are important to you.

And those elected officials will change laws, will change policies that will ultimately also facilitate the integration of new Americans into our communities.

Ben Rotko: One thing that is very impactful in helping people coagulate with different kinds of people around them is exposure. In the Port Washington school district, if you look at where the elementary schools draw from, there's almost an intentional effort to bring diversity to schools. Do you think there are ways that we can bring ideas like that into other parts of society and these often segregated towns?

Elise de Castillo: Sure, another program we have at CARECEN and it is our immigrant community navigator program, which does precisely that. It is one dedicated staff person whose sole focus is to work on issues of equity for immigrants on Long Island. It's really looking very broadly it, to encourage that, those interactions, that integration between receiving communities and new Americans for that very purpose.

Ben Rotko: So changing gears a little bit, you have worked with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Broadly speaking, what was that like?

Elise de Castillo: It was remarkable. I was there in 2013 and it was towards the beginning of the time that Long Island began to see an increase in child migrants from Central America.  I worked with the UNHCR to determine why.

We worked in shelters across four different States, interviewing children from the Northern Triangle countries who had been detained at the border as unaccompanied minors and interviewing them to determine the push and pull factors.

It was absolutely fascinating because it put into perspective all of the issues that children are facing in Central America and understanding that it's very rarely just one issue. It's a combination of factors that motivated the child to come to the United States or motivate a child’s family to send them to the United States. If you are a 17-year-old young man in El Salvador, or you're a prime target for forced recruitment by the gangs. It’s very often a matter of life or death. Sometimes it's parental abandonment, sometimes they come to be reunified with a parent who had traveled years prior, but it is very rarely just one thing.

Ben Rotko: How old were these kids?

Elise de Castillo: If memory serves correctly, they were from 12 to 17. There were certainly a few kids who came completely by themselves, which is like crazy to think about. Oftentimes, they would come with a person who would assist them in getting to the border. A 15-year-old doesn't necessarily know how to make it from San Salvador to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Ben Rotko: I think I understand, once they arrive at the border they’re put into the system and placed with somebody in Long Island.

Elise de Castillo: They get taken into custody by Customs and Border Protection where they're processed. Then, the U.S. government is required to place them in a shelter system to locate a family member or a sponsor that can take the child while the child's immigration proceedings play out in immigration court.

Ben Rotko: That system of sponsors and resettlement, how has that changed in the last few years?

Elise de Castillo: Everything has changed. Being an immigration attorney under the Trump administration is…

Ben Rotko: Stressful?

Elise de Castillo: It is living a life of whiplash and stomping out continual fires. Nothing is the same. It is a system in which all of the cards are stacked against the immigrant. The rights of immigrants in this country are being literally torn apart one by one. Even the most simple processes become substantially more difficult.

Ben Rotko: Walk me through it. The same kid, unaccompanied minor, arrives at the U.S.-Mexico border. 2013 versus 2018. What has changed?

Elise de Castillo: There are so many changes. Let's just talk about the way that the unaccompanied minor is viewed. In 2013, the unaccompanied minor was a 17-year-old boy from El Salvador who is fleeing forced gang recruitment. In 2018, the unaccompanied minor is the gang member who is infiltrating the United States on behalf of his gang. The framing of unaccompanied minors as changed completely because of the narrative that is coming out of Washington. This affects the way they are treated by the system.

Ben Rotko: Thank you so much, this was really informative and, best of luck in everything that you continue to do.

Elise de Castillo: Thank you. I appreciate it. We at CARECEN appreciate it.