Premieres Tuesday, July 9, 2024 at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV / PBS App + Encore Thursday, July 11 at 9 p.m. on KPBS 2
VOCES “From Here/From There (De Aquí/De Allá)” tells the inspiring story of Luis Cortes Romero, the first undocumented attorney to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The film follows as Luis – an immigration attorney as well as a DACA recipient – journeys from a difficult youth to the highest court in the land as part of a powerful legal team fighting the Administration’s attempt to rescind DACA.
Luis grew up with his parents and three siblings in Redwood City, California, where he attended a school for gifted students. It wasn’t until he was preparing for a much-anticipated class trip to Europe that he learned that, because he was born in Mexico, he was undocumented and unable to obtain a passport and therefore unable to join his classmates. When his father attempted to legalize his status he was instead picked up by ICE and deported. Luis’s once close-knit family splintered. He went through a bleak period of anger and rebellion, finally emerging thanks to his mother’s loving but firm encouragement and an inspiring Chicano Studies program at San Jose State followed by law school.
When the Obama administration established DACA – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – in 2012, Luis’s life was transformed. Now he could come out of the shadows, be licensed and practice law. Says Luis, “It took this weight off me that I didn’t realize was so heavy until it was off of me. I remember thinking, ‘I can’t waste this.’”
He became an immigration lawyer and began helping others like himself. In 2017, when working in his Seattle law office, Luis was asked to take on the case of a racially profiled DACA recipient, Daniel Ramirez, who was arrested and threatened with deportation. Daniel’s story alarmed Luis: “I’m brown, I have DACA, and I have tattoos. That could have been me.”
Recognizing the arrest could signal that DACA’s shield had been breached, Luis posted an APB to his legal network and quickly connected with renowned civil rights lawyers who helped assemble a powerhouse pro bono legal team to defend Daniel. A few months later, the Trump administration abruptly rescinded DACA, threatening the over 700,000 DACA recipients, including Luis, with exile. The legal team moved quickly, assembling DACA-recipient plaintiffs, and sued the U.S. Government to save the program.
The case moved to the Supreme Court, where the DACA cause seemed lost given the high court’s increasingly conservative turn. But believing in the rightness and urgency of their cause, the DACA team was undeterred and attracted an unlikely ally, renowned conservative lawyer Ted Olson, who served in the George W. Bush and Reagan administrations.
In November 2019, Luis made history as the first undocumented lawyer to appear before the nation’s highest court. After oral arguments, the pundits uniformly predicted that DACA was likely headed for defeat. Months passed. Luis and the other lawyers on the team impatiently checked the SCOTUS docket Monday after frustrating Monday. Finally, early on a June morning in 2020, the news comes – despite the odds, they’ve won. The Supreme Court overturned the Trump administration’s rescinding of DACA. Despite the victory depicted in the film, the fate of DACA continues to be argued in courts and in Congress, leaving the fates of hundreds of thousands of young people still in limbo.
Watch On Your Schedule: VOCES “From Here/From There (De Aquí/De Allá)” will stream simultaneously with broadcast and be available on all station-branded PBS platforms, including PBS.org and the PBS App, available on iOS, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Samsung Smart TV, Chromecast and VIZIO.
Credits: Produced and directed by Marlene “Mo” Morris. VOCES Executive Producer Sandie Viquez Pedlow.
