The Hangout
We talk with interesting people. Come on in and hang out!
The Hangout
#94 Immigration Law: A Conversation with Attorney Filex Sanchez
Filex Sanchez, founder of Union Law Group, shares his journey from growing up in San Ysidro, CA on the Mexico-US border to becoming a specialized immigration attorney after witnessing how profoundly his work could change lives. Raised by immigrant parents who operated an immigration consultancy for decades, Filex developed a deep understanding of his bicultural identity and an abiding respect for hard work and dedication. Filex maintains an ethical legal practice by only taking cases he believes can succeed and offering refunds for clients whose cases do not prevail.
Call Union Law Group:
US: 619-662-2170
Mexico: 664-622-5442
Welcome to the Hangout Podcast. I'm your host, david Sharetta. I hope you enjoy this show and, if you do, please share it with your friends and family on social media and in the real world. Come on in and hang out.
David Sciarretta:In this episode, I was so privileged to sit down with Filex Sanchez, who is the founder of the Union Law Group, which is a law firm dedicated to immigration law located in San Diego, california, and Tijuana, baja California, mexico. Filex and I talked about a wide range of topics, from his inspiring origin story, where his parents were his first and enduring role models for hard work and community engagement and commitment, to the importance of family in his life, and to the political changes and changes to the law and the regulations and the de facto approaches to immigration enforcement in the United States. Regulations and the de facto approaches to immigration enforcement in the United States. Even over the past three months or so. We had an engaging conversation and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Welcome, Filex. Thank you so much for joining us today and we're just up the hill from your office and I appreciate your taking the time.
Filex Sanchez:I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Anything that I can help, anything that I can be of service to my community.
David Sciarretta:I think a good place to start is where we usually start with all the guests, which is your origin story, where you come from, which always informs, then, who you are and what you do.
Filex Sanchez:Sure, yeah, I was fortunate enough to be born in the US not something that I know merit on my part. This was my parents coming to the United States from Mexico, so I was lucky enough to be born in the US. I also have strong ties to Mexico, so I consider myself to be bicultural, 100% Mexican and 100% US citizen. I grew up in San Ysidro, the most bicultural place ever right, maybe the most right, depending on who you ask. Some people call it North Tijuana. Yeah, and that's my parents' office was two blocks away from the busiest port of entry of the world. I went to school at Mon Carmel, so that was just a couple of blocks away. Also in San Ysidro, grew up there, wow, and I haven't ventured far from the border. It's always something that it's part of who I am.
Filex Sanchez:My parents are the ones that started in immigration. It wasn't even my sort of decision. I started helping them out in their business. My dad was a consultant. He was never an attorney. He was an immigration consultant. A quote unquote notario, which is interesting because I have a perspective on both sides. A lot of immigration attorneys like to demonize notarios and I saw a lot of help that my dad did for his community. So I know that he was also limited in his role and what he could do and how he could represent clients. He couldn't talk about the law, he couldn't give them recommendations, that type of thing. So I think that I see that perspective. I have a lot of respect for a lot of notarios. Obviously, there's everything, a range. There's a range, there's good people and there's not so good people and unfortunately, our community is prone to being victims of fraud and abuse and whatnot. But I see that also with immigration lawyers, right. So it's not a notario thing, it's just like in any profession.
David Sciarretta:It's a human thing, right, it's a human thing, yeah.
Filex Sanchez:So I didn't even think that I was going to be an immigration lawyer. I actually thought that I was going to fly out to New York or LA and be a corporate lawyer or something like that. And at some point I started my practice in San Ysidro my mom's office and when I was there, started picking up back. Then we would call it door law, right anybody who knocked on the door. That was the kind of law you practiced. So whether it was a bankruptcy or divorce or anything, and just because I was at the border, I would happen to get a lot of immigration clients.
Filex Sanchez:And I think I remember very clearly the day that I decided to let go of everything else and just focus on immigration and become a specialist. And it was a day that I had a client who she came to me and I was extremely busy and I was like walking past her and then she grabbed me and she said and I said yeah, and I didn't recognize her in the moment, and she said I'm back in Spanish and in that moment I clicked oh, that means that she left and came back and she was able to come back legally and I said, oh, great, congratulations, but again, just talking past her, essentially, and then I said, okay, con permiso. And I was walking away and then she grabbed me, like physically, and that was shocking. And then she said, no, you don't understand, I'm back. And I see that she's crying, she's tearing up, and I think it was that moment that I saw how much of an impact I can have on everyday people's lives, and I think that was the day that I said you know what this is for me? This is what I want to focus on.
Filex Sanchez:One way or another, I consider myself an immigrant, being the son of two immigrants, and I just said this is my community. I need to do anything I can to make this happen, and I felt so fulfilled and that's the day that I decided to become an immigration specialist. I took the specialization exam sometime in 2012. I've been a specialist since, and our practice is exclusively immigration. I don't I know about divorce, but I can't help people with divorce procedures. I know a little bit about bankruptcy, but it's not my strength. My strength is definitely immigration and nationality.
Filex Sanchez:Now you have offices both sides of the border. I do, yes, we have an office in Tijuana. We have an office in San Diego. We have plenty of clients that cannot cross into the US, so we represent them down there. We also have clients all over the world. We're fortunate that I've literally been able to help people from Japan, china, russia, africa, you name it. We've had clients from every part of the globe, obviously all parts of the United States as well. I've had clients from Maine, from Florida, from Seattle, from Nevada, arizona, texas, and immigration allows for that. It's one of those things that is really noble. It's federal law, so I'm able to practice in the entire United States, it's not just a California thing. So dealing with federal immigration law helps me be able to represent clients all over the United States. So it's one of those things that is extremely rewarding represent clients all over the United States. So it's one of those things that is.
David Sciarretta:It's extremely rewarding. Now you've practiced through a number of presidential administrations. Yes, now, previous to hitting record, we were talking about the first Trump administration, and et cetera, and there's always this talk that characterizes Obama as the ex, the deporter in chief, the quiet deporter. He might not have talked about it a lot, he certainly didn't put it on Twitter, but numbers, wise, numbers don't lie. How have you been able to remain agile and really continue to meet the community's needs as the federal? Both laws and then also just the temperature changes from administration to administration.
Filex Sanchez:Sure. So practicing during the Obama years was definitely a challenge. The way I would classify it is very different from this administration in the sense that there was a very clear focus on priorities. So the government had priorities that they were going to deport or remove, which is the legal term remove criminals and people that have prior removal orders, or that type of thing who had gotten caught and came back.
Filex Sanchez:Yeah, so the question then during the Obama years was what do you consider a criminal? Would it be something as simple as maybe a petty theft? Would it be a DUI? I represent clients from all walks of life. I represented people that have done bad things and my take on it is they deserve a fair hearing, they deserve representation.
Filex Sanchez:But I don't think anybody is saying that we want to have gang members be our neighbors or people that have committed violent crimes in our kids' schools. I think that we all can agree on that. But again, who do you classify as a criminal and who makes that decision? So during the Obama years, there was a lot of focus on removing people that were seen as criminals and they had a list of what crimes classified you as a criminal. Now, one thing that a lot of people don't talk about is that there is a very simple procedure called expedited removal, which happens at the port of entry or happens when somebody is coming into the US. That's an easy way of increasing your deportation numbers because they don't even go through a hearing. The hearing is done right there at the port of entry.
David Sciarretta:They show up somehow get detained and then, like you have, you can't be in the United States to go home. Right, send you home.
Filex Sanchez:So there's a. There's two different things. There's a, there's something called voluntary departure or voluntary return, and then there's expedited removal and the person who makes that decision is the officer that detained you In the moment. In the moment, okay, so you get detained by an officer and you are going to be granted right that's the legal term granted a voluntary departure or a voluntary return, which has no immigration consequence but discretionary. The officer can also remove you and the officer in charge is the person who makes that decision. So obviously those don't go through hearings. There's no evidence being presented, you don't have a right to representation, unless you specifically say that you have fear of returning to your home country. You're going to be removed or deported. So that happens every day and that happened a lot during the Obama year.
Filex Sanchez:And it's interesting because a lot of I have CBP the Customs and Border Protection friends and they don't know what the legal consequences of an expedited removal is. They don't know. They were just told you have to execute an expedited removal. Don't give them an option for voluntary departure. Now the problem with expedited removal Don't give them an option for voluntary departure. Now the problem with expedited removal is it comes with a five-year ban to re-entry. And if you do re-enter during those five years, you're subject now to a 20-year removal right. So, from the person who's being detained, whether it's a voluntary departure or an expedited removal, it looks identical. You cross the border, you're detained, you're fingerprinted, your picture's taken and then you're taken out of the country. Sometimes you're told that you're being removed for five years. Sometimes you're not right. Sometimes they give you some paperwork, sometimes they don't. So from the perspective of the person coming in, they have no idea.
Filex Sanchez:Now you can be subject to expedited removal even if you have a visa, a valid visa, right. If the officer thinks that you're lying to him, like, for example, where do you work? Oh, I work in Tijuana. Right, at the sort of like the swap meet, you can't prove that you're not working in the US. So I'm going to, I'm going to deport you. Right, you had a visa, you were coming in to visit family. So then something happens later on and you decide to come into the United States illegally. Now you're subject to that 20-year bar, unbeknownst to you, obviously. A couple years down the line, you get married, have a kid, you come to an immigration lawyer, we do a background check and we say sorry. You're subject to this 20-year bar and you have to be out of the country for at least 10 years before you're allowed to file for a waiver.
Filex Sanchez:So that was the issues that we have during the Obama years that so many people were subject to these expedited removals. That it was, I wouldn't say innocent, but it was relatively innocent compared to it sounds pretty bad. You were deported and you came back illegally. Right, it sounds pretty bad. But what if you don't know? You were deported and it doesn't justify breaking the law.
Filex Sanchez:However, because of international conventions, people can come into the united states and apply for asylum, and so I have a lot of people, a lot of friends, that are on the right and they ask me like, but they're coming in illegally. And I said there's a reason for that right. Most of our asylum laws come from international treaties that are that came about during after world war ii, and the reason was because german jews, polish jews, they couldn't go through a port of entry to seek refuge in a neutral country. They had to go through. Have you ever seen a world war ii movie? And oh yeah, they're escaping. They're going through the fields. The fields they're going, which is essentially what we have here. They're going through the fields the fields, which is essentially what we have here. They're going through our fields, right, and there's a reason for that Because you can't go through a port of entry because what's going to be just before the exit, the Nazis stopping you and sending you to concentration camps. So, based on that, our international law said you don't have to go through a port of entry in order to seek asylum. Right now, that's being thrown in our face and saying you're a criminal just because you entered illegally. But I'm still following international law Right now.
Filex Sanchez:Fast forward to the Trump administration, the first one and the second one and compare that to the Obama years. Obama had DACA, right. We had parole in place for military families. We had very much of yes, we're going to focus on removing criminals, but there's also family reunification, a focus on family unity, when, if you were clean, you're going to be fine. And they had this thing called prosecutorial discretion, which essentially said look, if you're not a priority, we're not even going to waste our time. And that is precisely why they were so effective at deporting everybody else, because they had their priorities.
Filex Sanchez:The problem with the way you see it, with the Trump administration. Trying to deport everybody is precisely that when everything's a priority, nothing's a priority, right, you're trying to get rid of everybody. And let's say, one of my clients gets detained no criminal issues during the Obama years wouldn't have been worried about it. Now this person is subject to deportation proceedings. He's going to go see a judge, but what is he going to do? He's going to fight for his case, right, he's going to take up court time, court resources. He's going to hire an attorney, he's going to present evidence, he's going to present witnesses. And if he loses, what is he going to do? He's going to appeal, and that's going to take up more resources.
Filex Sanchez:So we have this question Again if everybody's a priority, then nobody's a priority, and do we really want to? I would say that we're sacrificing our community safety by having the person who isn't an issue that will probably immigrate some other method spouse, a us citizen, spouse, us citizen, kids, something like that and we should maybe really focus on the people who are violent criminals, people that have that we probably don't want to be as our neighbors, let's say. I think the problem right now is that we're just demonizing every immigrant, so we don't want any immigrant to be our neighbor and let's say I think the problem right now is that we're just demonizing every immigrant.
David Sciarretta:So we don't want any immigrant to be our neighbor. And that's terrifying, would you say. Or how would you characterize the your experience of working with immigrants over your career as and perhaps this is me being somewhat intellectually lazy, but in thinking back on how immigration from South to North historically had been, at least the intellectually lazy way was it was Mexico. Mexican citizens in some way wanted to come to the United States. We know there's millions of folks, like your parents, for example, are Mexican descendants in the United States.
David Sciarretta:There was a shift, though, in the last what 10 years or so, with this term of caravan, really immigrant populations coming from all over the world, from a south to north trajectory, some from countries in South America and Central American countries, but then also from other parts of the world. At least that's the way it's characterized in the press. How has that shifted in the way you've worked? Or, in other words, maybe I'm not being clear with my question when you started your career, was it mostly dealing with families of Mexican ancestry and then now it's amplified, and is that a function of the way that world populations are shifting?
Filex Sanchez:sure, I think that I don't think that there's. If you see the numbers, I don't think that you're going to see a big influx of mexicans coming into the united states illegally. That's where I was trying to go in comparison to like maybe the 2000s or the 1990s.
Filex Sanchez:Okay, and you're going to see an increase in El Salvadorians, guatemalans, venezuelans, et cetera. If I could say there was a silver lining during the first Trump administration is that it made me a better immigration lawyer. It made me amplify all the other programs that I wasn't focused on, some things that I would see once in a while, like the Cuban Adjustment Act or something that was TPS for a specific country.
David Sciarretta:So you have to know like okay, this country, because they're allies of the United States since whatever else? Salvador since the 80s.
Filex Sanchez:there's a priority All sorts of rules Did you enter before this date? Did you do this before this date? Did you marry somebody? Did your parents? And different countries have different regulations, so some cases that we had never seen. We have a client coming in 2017 or 2018 subject to removal, and over here I have to go and try to see if I can defend them before an immigration judge or file an affirmative application, and during the conversation I'll ask wait, when did you come in? Again this date? Oh, wait, I think I remember something reading somewhere, something a long time ago, about this specific situation. Let me see if it applies to you.
Filex Sanchez:So, having to do your research and while you're doing more research, you're navigating that labyrinth of law and I always tell my new associates, doing getting on the ground is the most important way for you to learn. It's not so much the reading part, right, it's being with the clients, but make sure that once you take that information, you go back and you do your research, because as you're doing your research, you're going to discover, oh, this law actually applies to this other case or this regulation or this precedent decision. I could, I remember I spoke with somebody and sometimes this happens, right, I have a client comes say I'm sorry, I can't help you, or this is going to be the legal strategy. Later on I do research and then I go back to that client six months ago and I say you know what I messed up. There's something else that we can do, because now your situation has changed. Sorry, your situation hasn't changed. Now I've discovered something new.
Filex Sanchez:So the first Trump administration made us all better. Lawyers kept us on our toes, definitely had to be kept abreast of everything that was going on, and we have to know not just California law and Ninth Circuit, which is where we are, but we have to know we have clients in Texas, fifth Circuit. We have clients in Florida. They treat certain crimes different ways over there or procedures are different in those jurisdictions. And we have to know all that. When we sit down with our initial consultation and it's a lot and we say federal law specifies that a crime is. These are the elements of the crime. California law the elements of the crime are completely different and we have to say do these match up or are they sufficiently different where, yeah, you might've committed this crime, but it's not the federal equivalent right? So that's how we are able to defend our clients.
Filex Sanchez:As you may know, immigration consequences is not subject to double jeopardy, which means that if you do your time for the crime that you committed, you are still subject to removal, and that's not a punishment, that's an administrative decision. Basically, it's like the driver's license, the DUI. You get a DUI, you might go to jail for a week and then you might lose your license. That's not double jeopardy, you just can't have your license because you committed this crime. So that's the same thing with immigration law.
Filex Sanchez:So now again, first Trump administration, we have to be on our A game. Every single time, every single day, we go to the judges and something that was routine procedure. I remember my, my, if I might digress into a little absolute anecdote, I remember very specifically the first Trump administration was, I believe the swearing in, if I'm not mistaken, was January 20th of 2018. So in December of 2017, just after the elections, I had a case that was up for his individual hearing, which means this is the trial, and it was scheduled for January 22nd, two days after the swearing in, after the presidency, and in December, I'm dealing with the government counsel and we had agreed that we were going to dismiss the case my client was going to look for a different relief through an adjustment of status through a US citizen spouse. We had already agreed, we already had it in writing, we already had it signed and submitted with the court. And January 21st I get a call on my cell phone from the government council and says hey, I just want you to know, we have a hearing tomorrow. This is the individual, this is the hearing.
Filex Sanchez:At this point we didn't have any, we hadn't presented evidence, we didn't have a list of witnesses, we didn't have anything because we had already decided to dismiss. We already had it with the judge. All the judge had to do was sign it and dismiss. So basically, they said just want to let you know that we're going to oppose the motion to dismiss. They said based on what, we already had it agreed, we already have it in writing, we already signed by your, by the government and by my client, and it's just it's in the judge's desk and tomorrow he's just going to sign and give it and terminate this case and said things have changed. And I said what has changed? And he said there's a new president. I said yeah, I'm well aware of that. There's these new memos. Now, memos are things that the president like executive orders, but they're published, they're made public. I'm sorry, I'm not aware of any executive orders that your bosses have signed since yesterday. So what has changed? Things have changed. I'm just letting you know. We're going to oppose Hung up and that was not the way we dealt with the government during the Obama years.
Filex Sanchez:It was very much of let's work together, how do we get this case, how do we get relief? So the idea was how do we solve this case together? And that was not the same thing. And it wasn't a change of president, because this is somebody who this was a change of. For eight years we weren't allowed to deport people, and now we can.
David Sciarretta:It's almost like a built up resentment. They were how to tackle how does a how does an entity? Rhetorical question how does? Anybody who dealt with government entities know knows that they don't move typically quickly in any direction where it takes months years. Entity seem to move so quickly in any direction, where it takes months, years. How does an entity seem to move so quickly in a 180 degree?
Filex Sanchez:different direction. This is what we're seeing today, because this is extremely interesting. We were filing motions to dismiss left and right. Just, I can't remember January, whenever he January 20th, 21st, we were it was Sunday before the inauguration and we were getting judges, government councils, signing motions to dismiss because they knew that the next day they weren't able, they weren't able to send them out, and so we had cases left and right that we had to dismiss. And then on January 20th, the day of the inauguration, at 12 o'clock, exactly everything stopped and it was just like you said, 180 degree turn. And now it's okay. I told my attorneys all right, it's time to grind Like we're in, and now there's no turning back.
David Sciarretta:So your team, that has to be even more creative. More I mean you were saying before we started this conversation officially is even more creative. More you were saying before we started this conversation officially is that perhaps we lacked creativity and maybe your profession lacked creativity in anticipating how quickly things change. Right, that this administration, not just the president. Right, he's got a whole team. Sure, project 2025 and whatever. There are a lot of really smart people focused on certain areas where they have an agenda and they're pushing really hard. Sure, and so if that's their only focus to try to find creative ways to get around things they're going to they throw everything at the wall and some of them are going to stay. Something's going to stay Exactly. So you, then, with your team and your associates who you lead, you have to be try to be in step with them or even ahead of them.
Filex Sanchez:And that has been the challenge that it seems that we have our strategies for what we know works, when things when they're, when they throw at us the normal things. The client committed a crime and we know what the crime was and we know how California classified that crime and we know what the crime was and we know how California classified that crime and we know what the sentence was. And. But now they're throwing these left, like a heart tattoo on their arm Exactly, and that tattoo, because it has a crown, is all of a sudden your client. You see, that is what is so frightening about my clients who are Venezuelan. It was interesting. I made a joke with one of my clients and I said it seems like the focus is all of a sudden Venezuelans, not Mexicans. So I think you're safe for now. And we all started laughing. But I say that facetiously because I think that's what is so scary when you have a tattoo and, based on that tattoo, you are able to classify this person as a gang member with no due process, no oversight, just because they said so. And I've had that situation before. I had an 18-year-old kid who had a couple of tattoos. I couldn't identify which one was gang-related. But he went to the consulate at Ciudad Juarez. He was Mexican and they said, no, you're a gang member. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out. And I said are you a gang member? No, have you ever associated with gang members? No. Are any of your friends gang members? No. So what did they say? Why did they focus on that? They said my tattoos. Which one he had? The normal. I don't have any tattoos, but he had that sort of the street tattoos. He's just a young kid, he was 18 years old, his wife was a US citizen and we fought that case like crazy and it was just some government official that saw a tattoo and said, hey, that looks like a gang sign or a gang tattoo. And we weren't able to figure it out.
Filex Sanchez:And we obviously see how now even the Supreme Court is saying hold on, there is some due process. You can't even the Alien Enemies Act. You still have to go through at least a judge, right, whether that's in a habeas corpus petition or whether that's an immigration. But there has to be some oversight to this, otherwise it really becomes fascism and really and I think the Supreme Court I don't think the Supreme Court is going to be much of an arbiter. I think they're going to let him do most of what he wants to do, but they're going to at least have some veil of. We're still relevant. The Supreme Court and the justices and the judicial branch is still relevant, because otherwise why do we have them? What's the point? So there is this question is he going to follow a judge's orders?
Filex Sanchez:When we saw Kilmar, the El Salvadorian that was deported even though he had no issues and the only reason that he was identified was because some informants said that he was part of a gang, ms-13 in New York, where he had never been, and that's all the information that we have.
Filex Sanchez:And then they basically said, no, we're not going to bring him back. And then the judge said, no, you have to bring him back, we're not going to. And so that sort of tension is you've made your decision, judge, now enforce it. And how do you enforce it when the judge who's supposed to enforce it, most likely will have to reach out to some sort of government agency to arrest the officer or penalize the government official who's making this decision? That goes against the court order. If we don't have that, there is no judicial officer, the Supreme Court and the courts of appeal and the district courts. They don't have an enforcement team. There's no police for the judges. So if the government is violating the law and we know that they are, because the judges are saying that they are and they have immunity because Trump is giving them immunity that really is a constitutional crisis.
David Sciarretta:Yeah, that's the definition and that's where we are right now. We're on the verge of that.
Filex Sanchez:It's a matter of time.
David Sciarretta:There's never been a president who has defied the Supreme Court.
Filex Sanchez:And so far they are skirting around the edges, not openly defying, but they're getting very close and we'll see.
David Sciarretta:This whole concept of removing someone and sending them to a third country that's not their home country and it's not the United States. We saw it after 9-11, obviously for under very different pretenses. Whether folks agree with them or not, I think Guantanamo Bay has been an unresolved issue from everybody from.
David Sciarretta:Obama, there's people who are going to die there of old age eventually, because now they have no place to go in the world. Could you ever have imagined that we would, in your line of work, be dealing with cases where someone might contact you and say, felix, my cousin was deported, we're from Honduras, but he's now in prison in El Salvador and I don't even know how to reach him. And it's a prison where the president himself has said there's only one way out of this prison in a coffin.
Filex Sanchez:It's interesting, so I'll give you an example. If one of my clients is deprived of their due process rights and they are kicked out of the US, we are able to file a writ with the district court judge and the district court judge can say bring him back. Now, if my client is in, let's say, mexico and we have an order from the judge, my client could just go up to the port of entry and say hey, the judge wants me in his chambers or in his courtroom today at 1 pm, so you have to let me in. This is a judge's order and for the most part they're going to be what's called paroled into the US.
Filex Sanchez:But what happens when they're detained by a foreign entity? This is not even their home country. So if a Mexican is in a Mexican jail, then Mexico has the right to say whether you can leave or not, because depending on their laws. But what about El Salvador? El Salvador is not even a party to this. If you're a Venezuelan or Honduran, they're a different kind of party to it. But If you're a Venezuelan, or Honduran.
David Sciarretta:There are different kind of party to it.
Filex Sanchez:But they're not a party. No, they're not illegal. Exactly, yeah. So the judge can't go and say El Salvador, you are obligated to release this person and bring him back into the United States. They can say that to the United States and that's why the United States is saying it's out of our hands.
David Sciarretta:But it's very convenient and we're paying El Salvador, by the way, for this Sure, the service is rendered, sure.
Filex Sanchez:And now, a couple of days ago, when they were flirting with the idea of saying that they might even deport US citizens, that's incredibly interesting, right, because that sort of begs the question as US citizens, we have due process, right? So how would that? So it's these again. It's a lack of imagination on our end, but and why? We haven't been effective at combating this administration. We're on the defense, right. We're backed up into a corner and we're just reacting to the news of the day or a specific tactic that they're using with one of our clients, and we don't have any precedent to how we deal with this. And my hats go off to the attorneys that are defying and that they're the ACLU and some of the bigger firms that are not backing down from. There was there's a couple of firms Skadden, I believe, is one of those firms that decided to capitulate, and Perkins isn't right. So it's interesting to see that dynamic with, even within big law. But my hats go off to the attorneys and I've said this a lot in my social media the we don't have a cohesive response to this movement. There's the part the democratic party isn't effective at combating and they don't have the tools, they don't have the wherewithal, they don't even. I don't even think that they have an identity right now. They don't. They're pretty fractured, absolutely Far left, moderate yeah, absolutely.
Filex Sanchez:And so the judicial branch has been. The courts have been somewhat of a line in the sand, but the ones who are really taking up the mantle are the attorneys. Maybe I'm giving myself props there, but it really has been that the attorneys are the superheroes of this whole novel. They have been really been the ones that are like we're just going to file lawsuits left and right, and even after the supreme court just came back down and said that the alien enemies act can continue as long as there's due process, guess what? Two lawsuits come in and two different judges, both out out of Texas, said wait, based on the Supreme Court ruling, we're still putting a nationwide pause on it. You can't deport people without due process.
Filex Sanchez:Now what does that actually look like? Whether that's a hearing in federal district court or whether that's a hearing in immigration court is still to be seen, and the Supreme Court didn't specify. But it will be interesting to see how this is going to go back. And the Supreme Court didn't specify, but it will be interesting to see how this is going to go back up to the Supreme Court. I don't ever. The reason I believe that the Supreme Court is not going to is basically going to allow Trump to do most of what he wants to do is because it's very rare that a case goes all the way to the Supreme Court that quickly. We have cases that have been pending for years and the Supreme Court will eventually look at them. I'm talking about six, seven, eight, 10, 12 years, and this case has come up in two months. It's incredible. So the Supreme Court is definitely not going to be. They're not here to save the day.
David Sciarretta:It's almost a kind of a dystopian novel type of a situation. I remember reading the 9-11 report. 9-11 Commission did this lengthy report and it was pretty fascinating reading, mainly because they talked about the lack of imagination and lack of coordination that the various law enforcement agencies in the United States had, as well as the CIA and internationally. And no one had thought of this. Flying a plane into a building, flying a plane at the start of its journey into a building so that it's full of fuel and there'd actually been screenplays about it and people were like whatever, some TVB movie and that was the end of it.
David Sciarretta:And it's interesting, as you mentioned, lawyers being courageous and also creative and out front on these things. And who would have thought that we'd see both universities, law firms capitulating or not, depending on and oftentimes it's over money and access and the future viability of that entity? Really, sure, are they going to get shut down or not? Media companies, Media companies, the same way, big tech Sure, a friend of mine works at Facebook. I was giving him a hard time. I'm like I have a friend at Google.
Filex Sanchez:Exactly right. I sent him a picture of the Gulf of America and I said what's?
David Sciarretta:going on, that's right.
Filex Sanchez:Yeah, is it?
David Sciarretta:on Google maps. Yeah, it's just a really interesting thing. Can you talk to us a little bit about how you approach the topics of the intertwined topics of culture, language, identity when you're dealing with the families who you work with, the clients who you work with, because they're not exclusively from Mexico either, so the language is only one piece of that. So you've got folks from Central America, south America, all over the world. How do you leverage both in your work and also with your associates to make sure that you're meeting the needs of not only that particular client but their family as well? What you do is it's a cross between legal expert, but also like counselors, psychologist, social worker, shoulder to cry on the whole shooting match right?
Filex Sanchez:Yeah, absolutely. I think in our industry we have a set of values that we teach and that we live by, and I think the first one is empathy. And our definition of empathy is slightly different than what, I would say, most people. So when I ask people their first thought about empathy, they'll turn around and say treat others the way you want to be treated, the golden rule. And I say, yeah, that's a great place to start, but that's not where it ends. That's something that I tell my kid when he's in kindergarten. He's taking somebody's toy away. How would you like it? But I think that's too basic. I think empathy goes a step further and it says don't treat people how you would want to be treated. Treat people how they want to be treated. And the best way of knowing that is first to build trust and communication. So if I know how you want to be treated and the only way to do that is spending time with them, sitting down, spending time getting to know your story, getting to know your background, that helps me understand and even asking questions, right, literally. What are your expectations and understanding that people before you are? Before you build that level of trust, you cannot expect an honest answer from somebody you haven't built trust with. They're going to tell you what they think they should be telling you, or they're going to tell you what they. What you want to hear it's not until you go deeper, and that takes time right. So spending the time with our clients is, I think, the biggest challenge, and this could be clients from any part of the world. Yes, I consider myself 100% Mexican, but I don't know. I can't begin to understand what somebody that grew up in rural Oaxaca and their life experiences, because I have very little connection to Oaxaca. So the best way for me to empathize with any of my clients, whether they're from Honduras or from Russia, is to spend time with them and get to know them on a personal level and ask questions and be a blank page for them. Just tell me anything that you want me to know and be a blank page for them. Just tell me anything that you want me to know.
Filex Sanchez:I think many times as immigration lawyers, we get placed in that in the criminal side it would be the public defender Right when they have 20 cases. Today They've met with every one of their clients for two minutes behind bars. They're going file by file and reading it for the first time in front of the judge, and they're doing the best that they possibly can with the very limited time that they have. And as immigration lawyers, we cannot afford that. We have to spend time with our client and that is difficult when you're getting, when things are coming out at you out of left field, but you run the risk of not being able to fully represent your client.
Filex Sanchez:I'll give you one specific example. This is not a Mexican thing, but I can speak for a lot of my Mexican clients that family is the number one. If a client comes to me and I'll give you an example let's say a mother, father, 20-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter, right, they come to me and they say we want to immigrate to United States and I say, okay, mom, dad, you're good, 17 year old daughter, you're good, 20 year old son. Sorry, I can't help you, I don't have enough time before you're 21. It's just not gonna happen. No, I'm not even gonna. I'm not even gonna waste my resources on you.
Filex Sanchez:Because, I can't. I'm not to charge you for that, it's not worth it. That answer just doesn't. Now you lost the whole family. Sure, exactly Because they're not complete, because mom and dad are not going to be happy and their son is there, he's out.
Filex Sanchez:In some cultures they may say, that's okay, yeah, some cultures might be like, yeah, it's a very individualized, it's very yeah. And I actually have some clients that are like, look, if my kids can't immigrate, they're fine, I want to immigrate and that's okay. It's a little foreign to me, but I get it. But to me it very much has to be a one of those situations where, let me understand, I can't do it this way, but can I do it this other way? Can I spend time in focusing on, maybe, an asylum application? Or do you have a university degree that might allow for a non-immigrant work visa or something like that?
Filex Sanchez:I think there are very few immigration lawyers that have experience in sort of the gamut of every area of immigration law, because it's not just removal defense, it's not just criminal issues, it's not just petitioning through a US citizen spouse. We also have to deal with non-immigrant visas, h-1bs, l-1 visas, o-n-vs for extraordinary individuals and athletes. I also have to know about things like U visas for victims of crime, violence Against Women Act. Wait, special athletes get special. Yeah, how do you think that anybody who wants to come into the World Cup next year is going to come in? They have to come in with some sort of work visa. I thought there was a special World Cup line. It's interesting. My worldview is through the lens of an immigration lawyer.
Filex Sanchez:So I'm seeing the Olympics and I'm thinking, wow, this is amazing. How many immigration lawyers had to come together and bring all these athletes from all over the world to be able to come to this specific event that only lasts for 30 days. And then you see the news of some team from some country defected and now they're applying for asylum. And that was their in right. That was. They came in as athletes and then they became asylum seekers. Yeah, how many Cuban baseball players have ever done?
David Sciarretta:that.
Filex Sanchez:Exactly so. It's interesting. That's the way I see the world. I see the news and I see sporting events as an interesting case in immigration. Events as an interesting case in immigration Wow never thought of that yeah, of course.
David Sciarretta:It's not normal. My wife criticizes me. You bring up so many really fascinating topics and different. It's just so relevant to daily life, whether you're like you, a super expert or a lay person like me who's just interested in these topics. And of course, we're whatever eight miles, or whatever it is, from the border. So we're in the Tijuana-San Diego mega region is what we're really in, with a somewhat arbitrary political line drawn in the middle which, by the way, could have actually was supposed to have been drawn farther north at one point, but the US wanted to capture a harbor here, which is why it was pushed south.
David Sciarretta:But there's a lot of talk about immigration reform right, that's every presidential campaign. This one was no different. Kamala Harris got a lot of heat for supposedly being the one in charge of quote unquote fixing the border issue, unquote. And then it turns out it hadn't really been there. It's a political hot potato. It's always in the news. If you had a magic wand being an expert in immigration law policy, you live it and breathe it every day and you're a product of it and you grew up a stone's throw from another country, et cetera. What kind of reforms would you to see happen for the good of humanity?
Filex Sanchez:I think there's a couple. Honestly, I don't like this. Our immigration system is broken. Yes, it is broken. There are things that penalize people for relatively innocent things, but there are very specific things that I think we could do to live up to our promise of America, the Statue of Liberty, the promise of Ellis Island, which is where my forefathers came through. Sure, have you been to the museum? Yeah, isn't that amazing?
David Sciarretta:It's amazing.
Filex Sanchez:I can spend days there and it's funny how the view of immigrants shifted over time when the 1850s, california was literally drawn as a cornucopia for the world to come here, and then in the 1870s that switched because of the Irish immigrants and saying don't come. And then it shifts back and then it keeps going back and forth. So I feel like it's a pendulum and right now I feel that the pendulum has swung so far and if I could say maybe that's something that needed to happen, because I'm hoping that the pendulum has swung so far, and if I could say maybe that's something that needed to happen, because I'm hoping that the pendulum swings back and there is that immigration reform, because I feel that right now the right has demonized immigrants so much that at some point people, everyday folks, are going to have to say wait, is it really that bad? My parents were immigrants and my neighbors are immigrants and there's that thing right, my neighbors aren't who Trump is after. They're good people. No, they are actually on the crosshairs, they are a focus, they are a target and they're going to get deported if they run into ICE.
Filex Sanchez:As much as you say that you didn't think that's what they were after. So I'm really hoping that there is a silver lining that happens out of these four years and that it's that the pendulum will swing back towards some sort of immigration reform. But there's a couple of things that just make sense. If you think of immigration, which I don't, but if you think of immigration as what's in it for the US or what's in it for business, then the guest worker program makes the most sense, bracero.
David Sciarretta:The Bracero program.
Filex Sanchez:The guest worker program. If you ask pretty much any, very few people want to leave their homeland and make the United States their home. It's not what they normally want. Some people have to because that's why they're asking for asylum. Some people are they have to. I'm not counting those, but I would say that those are going to be the minority. If you ask most people if they want to come to the United States, they would say yes, we want to go, we want to work, we're going to work hard, but we want to come home and we want to go back. So the guest worker program makes a lot of sense. Why don't people just go back? It literally costs $15,000 or $20,000 right now to be able to be smuggled into the US and that's just unfeasible. There's pueblos that between the entire pueblo, they come up with this money for one of their people to be able to come to the US, and that's not something that you want to do just because you want to go visit mom on Mother's Day. So a guest worker program makes the most sense and I think that makes. I think that we can sell US business on that. Expanding H-1Bs and professional visas makes so much sense If you come to United States and you're the best and the brightest, why are we making it so difficult? Why is there a cap? Even Elon agrees with that. Sure, yes. And so, again, we have to bring business into it, because they're going to be the political donors, they're going to be the people who are going to have a lot of sway with the politicians. So what's in it for us, or what's in it for our businesses in the US, is definitely a guest worker program and expanding some sort of professional visa.
Filex Sanchez:Back in the day, I think Obama had an ex-visa that never came to fruition, but the idea was, if you studied in the US, you should be able to get some sort of residency. We have to do something about DACA. I think even this president, actually Is it paused now? No, it's on and off. The people who have DACA are relatively safe. I don't think that they're in the crosshairs, at least for the time being, because that's a politically pretty untenable-. Yeah, I think a lot of Republicans would probably say that we should probably leave DACA out of it, because kids are kids.
David Sciarretta:Yeah, they're not kids anymore, right? No, but the kids were kids, sure, and they came in without their own choice.
Filex Sanchez:So that's a but. That's only around 700, 800,000 kids in the US or people in the United States. So we have to solve DACA. The DREAM Act would be a good start. I also think that we stop penalizing dumb thing. So right now there's something called the 10-year bar. If you come to United States, you're here for a year, you leave and then you come back. You have a 10-year bar. So even if you're married to a US citizen, you have three US citizen kids mom and dad are US citizens you still have to leave the country for 10 years before you're able to come back to United States. That's the number one reason that I might not be able to help out a prospective client.
Filex Sanchez:They come to me and they say when did you come in 1995. Did you ever leave? Yeah, I left in 2008. Why did you leave? I had a medical emergency, my mom was dying, something like that and then what happened? I came back. Okay, that second entry is another immigration violation, and now you have to wait outside of the country for 10 years. So what do they say? I might as well not do anything. I'm just going to stay undocumented in the United States for the rest of my life. Yeah, live in the shadow. Sure, His wife is a United States citizen, Kids are US citizens, Parents are US citizens. They have no option to immigrate in the United States. There is a couple of things like the UVs or whatnot. Legalize our status.
Filex Sanchez:A lot of things that I've heard from the Trump administration is leave and come back the right way, yeah, but when the right way is 10 years later and people are like 45 years old and they're like 55, like why would I even want to come back to the United States? I don't even know anybody back? Yeah, I haven't been to Mexico in 30 years, I haven't. But if I come back, by the time I'm 55, I'm not even be able to work anymore. Yeah, so incentivize people to be able to qualify for waivers. Stop, I would say stop criminalizing things that people do as under the age of 18. So we have this crazy issue that if you've ever claimed to be a citizen of the United States, you're inadmissible for life. There's no waiver, there's no pardon for that.
David Sciarretta:Like lying to a Sure In a process somewhere.
Filex Sanchez:Sure, and let me tell you, in the most ridiculous situations, how this has come across. There is no exception for minors. If I bring in right now a two-month-old with the birth certificate of another two-month-old who is a US citizen and they find out, it's probably not going to happen, but if they find out that two-month-old will never be able to immigrate in his life, you mean the baby.
David Sciarretta:The baby, the two-month-old baby, the one who had no say, the one who wasn't even conscious, can't even lift up their own head.
Filex Sanchez:Yeah, yes, because there's something called transferred intent. So my intent to falsely claim him or her as a US citizen goes to that baby for the rest of their life. And this actually we saw this a very famous case back in during the Obama years, I think, actually no, it was during the Trump administration. The first one DACA kid and they asked him when he went to the consulate how did you come to the United States? He's oh, I don't know. My parents took me to the US, I think, with my cousin's birth certificate. How old were you? Like three years old, done Gone, never coming back. And the uproar was doc, a kid can't come back, blah, blah, blah. It wasn't that. It was something very, again, very minor, very not minor, I wouldn't say, because it's a big deal to falsely claim citizenship. I'm just saying that kid had no say in what his parents or the person who was crossing him into the United States.
Filex Sanchez:The same thing happens for some criminal offenses right Underage kids. They don't have the legal capacity to commit a crime and yet who call this home? We have to create some pathways for them to be able to ask for some sort of waiver or a pardon or something like that. The majority of people pay taxes, they don't commit crimes, they do everything that a US citizen is supposed to be doing. They just have none of the say, all the responsibilities, but none of the benefit, right, they don't get any social security, they can't get any public assistance for anything. And so we're asking so much of them right, we can't ask them to return to their country that they've never been to, right, or they haven't been there in 30 years or 40 years. So there are some very common sense things that we can do.
Filex Sanchez:I think just right now, there isn't any political will on either side to make it happen. And this is the first time I'm a pretty positive, optimistic person. This is the first time that I've said we're not going to see immigration reform for at least four years, if not eight or 12. Maybe, yeah, and it depends, right, because one of the biggest things that we have right now is he might run again. I don't know how that could be, but let's just say that he doesn't. My lawyers are working on it. Sure, it's a red herring, I would say. I think so. Kind of like the Gulf of America, yeah, but nonetheless, if JD Vance decides to run and they have the political will and he ends up winning. Are we going to deal with now? 12 years of Republican control, where immigrants are going to continue to be scapegoated, and less of a political will for immigration reform?
David Sciarretta:That would be two presidents in a row who marry Democrats. Yeah, that is interesting. What do you as a practical matter? I'd imagine it requires sensitivity but also a realistic eye to run a law firm from the business end of things when some percentage of your clientele are financially perhaps unstable. Or you just described a scenario in which a whole village would come together to support someone coming illegally to the United States, but you have some clients who are following legal pathways to get into the US. How do you keep a law firm viable and also embrace a community, knowing that sometimes people won't be able to pay or are going to be on payment plans for a long time, and people who go to law school don't necessarily also get an MBA at the same time? I said that somewhat facetiously, but I think for a lot of professionals they're committed to the ideals of their profession. But there's also the business side. Can you talk a little bit about how you run a successful law firm, making sure that the lights stay on but also meeting the needs of it?
Filex Sanchez:Sure, my wife likes to say that I run a very successful nonprofit.
David Sciarretta:You're the only 501c3 law firm out there.
Filex Sanchez:But so most of our clients can't come up with the money to pay up our fees. One of the things that is difficult with my practice is that we give a lot of value to our clients. We are, we have a lot of connection, we have a big team. We're some 55 people on our firm. Wow, we have a big support staff. We have translators, we have paralegals, we have administrators, we have managers. If you call our law firm, you're going to be, you're going to. We get somewhere around 2000 incoming calls per month from actual clients not from prospective clients and people that want to make appointments with us. So we run the numbers. We have a 95% answer rate within 30 seconds, 5% of our calls. They usually call and hang up so we take those out. So running that part of the business and I love running the business side of the business- so strong focus on customer service above all else.
David Sciarretta:Yes, yes.
Filex Sanchez:And that is extremely expensive. Right, having a lot of people support staff to take care of my clients is extremely expensive and yet we still offer financing for most of our clients. A lot of our clients aren't able to pay the fees we always work with when somebody falls behind. We kind of work with them and say look, we know things are tough, come sit with us, we'll renegotiate. Even if you can do a $50 payment, just do something so that we can move forward.
David Sciarretta:So I can tell my wife I'm working hard to collect the money.
Filex Sanchez:And yet I think most of my clients want to. They want to pay. They don't. I have clients that didn't pay, that they got their residency a year or two years ago. And then they come back after two years and they're like, look, here's the last $200 payment. I want to make it and I'm like you could have skipped town and would never. I've never filed a lawsuit against one of my clients for not payment. Yeah, there's a part of our accounts receivable that's not collectible and that never will be, and I think I'm okay with that. I'm able to pay my mortgage, I'm able to put my kids in school and I live a pretty. I'm going to Hawaii next week, so I'm okay.
Filex Sanchez:I don't need to become a millionaire off of this. I want to make sure that my employees are well taken care of. I want to make sure that they have a good salary. I want to make sure that they have good benefits. I don't think that anybody should be. If I want my employees, if I want my clients to have dignified work and be valued at work and make the money that they deserve, I want my employees to make the same, and that's difficult.
Filex Sanchez:I have to deal with internal employee conflict. I have to motivate them when things are tough, when we get denials and we have to appeal. We don't charge for appeals, for example. Wow, for our clients. We don't charge If a client comes in and says hey, I had my case with another attorney and can you take over? Yes, we do, but with our clients, if you get denied and we can appeal, we will appeal and we're not charging our clients. And in fact we actually have this thing, which is actually pretty great. This is a small little plug, but we have this thing where we call Nuestra Promesa and the promise is that if your case isn't approved, we'll give you the attorney's fees back. And the reason that we do that is because I don't want my clients to lose twice If they get a denial and then they feel like maybe their attorney didn't do their job. So we'll tell the client like, look, do you want us to appeal or do you want your money back? And if you want to go to another attorney, I'll give you the file and I'll help the other attorney. The importance is in getting to the end goal. And I tell them like you have to give me a chance at getting there. Some other way I might not have been able to do this, but can I do this other thing? And of course, it's my client's case. So if they decide that they don't want to go that route, then I have to say, okay, here's your money back.
Filex Sanchez:I'm very lucky in that immigration law isn't like other types of law. For example, if you are in a criminal case and you hire a good hotshot attorney and he's able to bring down the sentence from a year to six months, did you win? And he's able to bring down the sentence from a year to six months, did you win? It's perception. Sure, we get to decide are we going to get your residency, are we going to get your visa? Are we going to get your citizenship or not? So it's a very black and white. It's not like you got a half residency. It's either your case was approved or it was denied. That's right. And also we get to select our clients A criminal lawyer, anybody who hires them, they will represent them, regardless if it was the most heinous crime ever or they're going to be life in jail, and they're still going to represent them fully.
David Sciarretta:So you get to someone comes in and gives you a case and you're like I can't help you Listen, you just admitted on video that you told someone you were a US citizen and you're clearly not.
Filex Sanchez:There's nothing I can do, there's nothing I can do for you, and so a big percentage of our prospective clients. Yeah, we take on a lot of appointments because we have to filter out a lot of people that, I'm sorry, I can't help you.
David Sciarretta:What's the number one thing that would disqualify someone so?
Filex Sanchez:that the tenure bar that I was telling you about the client coming into the United States, staying for a year, leaving and then coming back. That second entry is a second. It's not that we can't help them. We can file the petition, we can go through all the process, but at the end you're going to have to leave the country for 10 years and most of my clients are going to say I don that, so then we can't represent you.
Filex Sanchez:There's other reasons criminal issues, or if a client comes to me and says, hey, I married my wife, but she's not really my. We're not, we're just doing this for immigration papers, I'm going to say look, I can't help you with that. Just, I won't recommend you filing a petition because it's not ethical. That doesn't happen, it's rare. So I'm fortunate in that sense.
Filex Sanchez:But again, we're able to select our clients and out of the clients we are able to select, we have a really good shot at winning your case, and that's why we have this If you don't win, if we don't win your case, then we'll give you your money back. So we're very fortunate in that our success rate is 99. I'm inventing the number, it's not, I haven't calculated that, but it's very little that we'd ever have to return some client fees because our case wasn't successful. There's attorneys that I know that say it's like a 50-50. It's not a 50-50. As immigration lawyers, we know if this case is going to be approved or not and we want to give our clients that confidence, but it also comes down to your ethics, because you could, if you wanted to, be unethical.
David Sciarretta:you started out talking about your dad being a notario, which in the US and Mexico has a different connotation and a different, perhaps, level of how it's seen in society too. But there's this and your dad is an ethical example. But there's a lot of unethical examples, both of the studios and also attorneys who will take a case knowing it's not going anywhere, because you get, however many thousand dollars out of someone and then I'm sorry and you move on. So that must've been a decision. Maybe it was that motivated by seeing how your dad worked as well in terms of that, absolutely.
Filex Sanchez:My, my dad, and the whole money situation is I've inherited from him.
David Sciarretta:I remember one of the. He was a nonprofit operator. She was a nonprofit operator himself.
Filex Sanchez:I remember the one of the first things that I had to do working at his office was I was a techie and I was one of the first people in my family to like computers. So I was dabbling with Excel and he said, hey, these are our accounts receivable. Can you just the boxes? I'm talking about boxes of accounts receivable. And he's okay, take this box and kind of calculate how much we charge them and how much they paid and how much they owe and other contact information. And I started this Excel spreadsheet and I went through the first box and it was about $80,000. And this is when I was like 15 years old, so maybe $150,000 today, and that was one of 10 bucks.
Filex Sanchez:And I remember being upset at my dad and saying, hey, how do you run a practice like this? This is not, we're going to be bankrupt soon. And my dad pulls out a file he was really good at this. He pulled out a file and says look this person I immigrated, his mom, his dad, eight of his siblings, his cousin, his I've made money on this case a thousand times over. He owes 500 bucks. Let it go and like that.
Filex Sanchez:And that was my dad's way of being successful and also a way of giving back. And I think I inherited that because, again, I see clients and yeah, they still owe me some money and we'll all reach out to them every once in a while and be like, hey, if you can make a payment, that would be great. And oh, yeah, we'll pay. And I think most people I want to, yeah, they don't want to skip out. I think I want to think that if they can't pay, it's because they're spending their money on their family. They're putting food on the table. The rents are crazy in San Diego, they might've gotten laid off, they might have a medical emergency, and I'd rather live my life like that than thinking that people are purposefully out to not pay me and I'm okay with that. That's maybe my little contribution to that family. You'll probably live a longer life without that stress.
David Sciarretta:Yeah, in addition, apart from your dad, who else are your role model?
Filex Sanchez:My mom, your mom, yeah, 100% my mom and my dad. They're so inspirational. My dad passed away last year yeah, thank you, and my mom still works. Money was secondary, their community was first, their clients were first. They lived for their clients and their community. And my dad lived to 86 years old.
Filex Sanchez:I think part of the reason that he led, he had such a successful and he lived to that age was because he worked up until the pandemic and it wasn't during the pandemic that we told him like you got to stay home, it's too much risk to come out, and I think that kind of accelerated his decline. Now, in retrospect, I wish he would have continued or had some role. That was his sustaining purpose. He didn't do anything. I would say he wasn't extremely productive, but I think that it was just sort of something to do and just that connection with the clients. People would come in and my dad's, his name is Carlos and everybody would call him Don Carlitos. And oh, don Carlitos, and how have you been? And people have known him for 30 years, 40 years in this practice.
Filex Sanchez:Because he helped out 10 of their family members To this day. And he had a. She was sharp. Even the last of his days he would remember clients and I would tell him like hey, mr Rodriguez came in and he's oh, mr Rodriguez, and his wife and his mom and his cousin, and he remembered everything. My mom was also extremely inspirational. She, my mom, was also extremely inspirational. She's all about her clients. I always joke with her that after college I told my mom I said I'm going to take a year off before I go to law school.
David Sciarretta:I was already accepted to law school. I wanted to take one year off. My daughter as she edits this episode is listening to this.
Filex Sanchez:She's in that same boat right now.
Filex Sanchez:So she told me. So I said I'm going to take a year off. And she said and she looked at me. I don't think I've ever seen her so mad. And she said I just want to let you know that the year that you graduate law school I'm going to retire. So if you want me to wait another year working you hear that, maya? No, then by all means. And I said, oh my.
Filex Sanchez:And I was burnt out. I graduated with two degrees. I was burnt out from your undergrad and so I was an overachiever and wanted anyways. So then I was like I can't do that to my mom, I need to finish. So I went to law school and burned myself out my first year of law school. I almost flunked out, lost the scholarship and I just my mind wasn't in it and got back into it and I was able to graduate and pass the bar and whatnot. And then I told my mom I said hey, remember, you promised me that when I graduated law school you were going to retire. And she said no, did I say that? And I said and to this day she's still working. So she I say that it's funny Hindsight is 2020. I have no idea what would have happened if I wouldn't have gone to law school right after that? Would I still be a lawyer? Would I still? Would I have been in a different industry? Would I have liked I don't know making money off I don't know being a bartender?
Filex Sanchez:or a real estate agent? I have no idea, but she is an extremely hard worker. She's extremely tenacious. It's not a it's not a money situation. She's hard headed. If she is, if my mom wants something to get done, she will make it happen, and that's something that I value, because I have that sort of hard head in this too, and if I want something, it's going to happen, and I've learned that from her and hardworking. One of the earliest memories that I have of my parents is me waking up somewhere to 33 o'clock in the morning and my parents were working and that was an all day thing. My parents were working. My mom got into work at 7 o'clock in the morning and left at 9 o'clock 10 o'clock at night, every single day, and to this day she still goes to work on Saturdays and Sundays Wow, so extreme work ethic is bar none. I wish I had her work ethic, honestly, and maybe I get a little bit of guilt when I leave a little early, like today.
David Sciarretta:Don't tell her you're going to Hawaii.
Filex Sanchez:Yeah, no, I told her she loves the fact that I take a vacation. I wish I would have done that with you guys. When she sees the way I do that with my kids, I wish I would have done that with you. You don't get those years back, what?
David Sciarretta:do you do, apart from occasional vacations? What do you do to sustain yourself, right To recharge your own energy your own, just? I can imagine that the toll that this type of deep commitment with clients takes on you hear over and over again pretty tough stories sometimes. Sure, yeah, what do you do to take care of yourself so you can be the best of yourself for your clients, but also for your family?
Filex Sanchez:I don't have many hobbies. I love cooking. I love cooking because I have to focus on the cooking and I can't be thinking about other things. It's kind of like meditation. I love going to the gym. I'm also good at compartmentalizing.
Filex Sanchez:So when I'm sitting with a client and they're telling me their god awful story, I'm feeling it 100% and I don't ever want to lose that empathy and say the client before you had it worse, Never. And it doesn't matter how difficult or mild their experience was to this person, it's the worst thing that has ever happened to them. And I have issues with child abuse and they've been victimized To somebody. When this is one of the things that I tell my employees a lot, I said look, when you ask on a little form and it says when did you enter the United States and how did you enter the United States? And we have this thing called EWE, right, so entry without inspection. So it's an acronym and we just write it down and we just move on to the next question. That experience is one of the most God awful things that this person has ever gone through.
Filex Sanchez:That means they cross through the mountains or whatever, right Through the hills, through the desert, through the river. It could have been a three day ordeal with no food or water. For you, it's three letters. For you, it's three letters and you move on to the next question. And for them, sometimes my clients say I had to give myself in because I would have died.
David Sciarretta:We have, incidentally, we have students in our middle school who did that, who are 12 years old, and they did that on their own, with no adult Sure. Yeah or with no family members with a coyote.
Filex Sanchez:That's extremely some women and kids subjected to sexual abuse, and so we deal with these situations and again, we so I'm 100% with them and I can't tell you that I feel what they feel, because I haven't gone through that. But I'm concentrated on that and then when I'm, when I go home, I disconnect and I'm able to do that successfully and when I'm home, I'm husband and I'm dad and I'm me and yes, sometimes I bring home with me, but it was work with me home. But I'm actually pretty good at just, and that's why I try not to see the news, because I don't want to freak out. So I'll see the headline and I'm like, oh, why did I see that?
David Sciarretta:And I just gloss over it and I'll deal with it when I get to work tomorrow. I read your article about your kid.
Filex Sanchez:I think your son daughter making comments about the claims that immigrants were eating pets.
David Sciarretta:Yeah, that was scary, that was scary stuff.
Filex Sanchez:And I've had very difficult conversations with my eight-year-old and 10-year-old at the time and I told him there will be a moment where we might get detained. Understand that you're not going to answer any questions.
David Sciarretta:Remember, we had this conversation, we talked about it. Yeah, we talked about that.
Filex Sanchez:Yeah, my kids are like why are you going to get arrested, dad? I'm like I'm not telling you I'm going to get arrested. I'm just saying these are situations that are going to happen and we have to prepare for that and we will deal with it when we deal with it. There's no sense in we'll cross that bridge when we get there. There's no sense in me worrying about something that hasn't happened yet. So I try to be very much present for my clients when I'm there and I'm able to disconnect. So do I have to have hobby? I don't drink, I don't do drugs. I'm very much with my family.
David Sciarretta:No tattoos, no tattoos yeah.
Filex Sanchez:I'm very much with my family. I'm very much with my kids. They know what I do and they think I'm a superhero, which is awesome.
David Sciarretta:I love that.
Filex Sanchez:It'll last for a while Sure. And it wears off at some point, Right yeah, and then you recover it, right.
David Sciarretta:You recover, and then the way you talk about your parents with that reverence they're superheroes to you, yeah exactly Exactly, and I think that's all we can do, right.
Filex Sanchez:We leave our mark in this world, we do what we can. We do the best that we can. I recently saw an article, and I don't know what the title of the book is, but it's like the downfall or the essentially it's the negative side of empathy. This is a very right wing book that was published recently. That again, lack of imagination, right. When would we ever think that empathy is the bad guy? And I think the argument around it, if I'm able to articulate it, which I don't think I can or I should, but it's somewhere around that where, if we're too empathetic, we're letting people do whatever it is that they want, and I don't think that's what empathy is.
Filex Sanchez:I think the number one value that I teach my kids is empathy. I don't have it just for my office, I have it for my family too, and we talk about it all the time. It doesn't mean that you justify anything that they do, any actions, bad decisions that they've taken. People will make bad decisions. You can still empathize with them, regardless of where they are in life or the decisions that they made. Now my clients for the most part are law-abiding citizens, but sometimes, man, they make me upset. I'm like I'm trying to help you out and you're not helping me and this is very frustrating.
David Sciarretta:Take an Uber. Yes, take an.
Filex Sanchez:Uber, don't get a DUI right, or start that case, or file this or bring me these documents before this deadline, and it's quite frustrating. But then again, or file this or bring me these documents before this deadline, and it's quite frustrating. But then again that's me wanting what I want for them and that's not what they want for their life. So I have to go back to the empathy and just chill out and say, okay, what do you want? How can I help you?
David Sciarretta:You've been very generous with your time and I have before the final question. I wanted to see if there's anything that we haven't touched on that you might have rattling around your head as we're talking, or that you were thinking about driving here that you'd like to say, and also how folks can find you.
Filex Sanchez:Sure, I think that I love what you're doing. I think that this is such a great platform for us to have these sort of very in-depth discussions. I don't think I've had a discussion this in-depth with anybody since the election. So thank you for having me. I appreciate that. Thank you for your generosity.
Filex Sanchez:I think that the one thing that I would want people that might hear this is, if this is the situation that you're in, take action, do something about it. Don't just sit on the sidelines waiting for something to happen to you. If you are listening to this and you have a friend, a neighbor, a family member who is an immigrant, again going back to empathy is they've gone through a lot. You have no idea. Their stories are crazy. Listen to them. Don't judge, because we can. A lot of times we can, even if our heart's in the right place, we'll still judge a little bit. But they took the decisions that they took for the reasons that they thought were important at the time, right. They didn't have all the information the way we do now. Our hindsight is 20-20. Most of my clients are good, hardworking people. Most of my clients are people that deserve an opportunity. If we pluck one of these people out. Our community is worse off because of that, because it could have been and I don't mean to bring to devalue the human experience to the work that you do. It might have just been my plumber or my gardener, but he was a father, a husband, a wife, a parent, right?
Filex Sanchez:Our communities are worse off when our families don't have something that you and I maybe take for granted the fact that they're going to be there tomorrow. Of course, nobody has our life guaranteed, but we also don't live with the constant fear that I might come home and my wife might leave me a voicemail saying, hey, I got picked up and oh, by the way, I'm in, I'm deported. This is the fear that many of my clients live, the fear that when they drive down the street and they see a cop car, you and I might be a little scared oh, did I do the turn signal or did I go past the stop sign a little bit? But no, they're frozen in fear. Or the fear of when your spouse calls you on their phone and you're like is this the call? Is this the call that's going to say, hey, I'm in detention or, worse yet, I got deported. Because that can happen in less than two hours while you're at work, while you're dropping off your kids.
Filex Sanchez:And again, our communities are worse off. How do you think those kids live when the mom and the dad are having these conversations at night of what's going to happen when one of us isn't here. The mom and the dad are having these conversations at night of what's going to happen when one of us isn't here, and even if those conversations are held behind closed doors, kids are so intuitive. Kids are smart. They'll know, and even if they're US citizens, they can't live a full life with the fear that dad might not be here tomorrow morning. They just can't.
Filex Sanchez:And so what's happening is that we're creating a class of a second class citizen, of US citizens, that, unless they take birthright citizenship away, they're going to continue being US citizens, but they're going to be second class citizens because they're just not going to be able to live a normal life, because they always have that fear one foot in, one foot out, contingency plan all the time. And what's going to happen in 2030 years? Those kids are not going to be able to grow up, to live a life of being able to go to college, contribute to our society the way we would like for them to do Be fully present in their family's lives, as a husband and a wife and having their own kid. So the repercussions of what's happening now, yes, we'll be seeing now, but we'll be magnified in 20 years.
David Sciarretta:Yeah, that's, I hadn't thought of it that way, with a second class citizens, you know, us citizens just living in that kind of limbo.
Filex Sanchez:But there's hope and I don't want to.
David Sciarretta:I don't want to leave the conversation on a sour note.
Filex Sanchez:I think that there's hope and I don't want to leave the conversation on a sour note.
Filex Sanchez:I think that there's hope and I think that the hope is if, as a community, we can come and stand behind, sort of, some of the more progressive policies and, with a lot of empathy, really create a political movement, the pendulum will swing.
Filex Sanchez:And I feel that it's kind of like the bigger they are, the harder they'll fall right. So the bigger the MAGA movement is, the harder it will swing, and I feel that it's kind of like the bigger they are, the harder they'll fall right. So the bigger the MAGA movement is, the harder it will swing and we will be able to have not just immigrants' rights but LGBTQ rights and a lot of things that are right now caught in the crosshairs we will have. I think the hope is that we can come together as a community and if there is no united front on the political end, at least as a community we have a united front and we are the resistance right now. So I think what I told my employees is like all we got to do is survive these four years. That's it. That's all we got to do is just survive and we'll make it through.
David Sciarretta:So the last question is a hypothetical. Sure, let's say you have the opportunity to design a billboard for the side of the freeway and it can't be a union law group billboard. Sure, what does your billboard say about what you value in life, about the way you see the world? Remember, people who are driving by 70 miles an hour got to capture that. What does your billboard say? What's the first thing that pops into your mind?
Filex Sanchez:Our time? Just a billboard and you zooming by at 70 miles an hour. Our time on this earth is extremely limited. We only have a very short time to leave an impact on this world. The impact that I would want our people to do is the impact that brings people up, that supports people, that elevates people, rather than takes away rights or disenfranchises people or sees them versus us. So I would say you only have a very specific amount of time, and the selfish, the egocentric tendencies won't bring you happiness. It definitely is going to be. How do you elevate your community? And so we have a very short period of time. Make the most of it, because we're not going to be here forever. Now, how do you condense that into a billboard?
David Sciarretta:It's okay For this one.
Filex Sanchez:you get a traffic jam so people drive real slow, so we can stretch it out.
David Sciarretta:Sometimes people go. Could I have two?
Filex Sanchez:billboards, or the ones in Las Vegas? Yeah, exactly the series of billboards. Someone asked me if they could have a Goodyear blimp. Yeah, I would say. Life is short, make the most of it. Support your community, and we're all in this together.
David Sciarretta:Felix, I really want to thank you for the generosity of your time, your expertise, your stories. It was very moving the way you characterize your parents as role models, and we'll link to your firm's contact information in the show notes Union Law Group. Anybody can look it up as well, and again I thank you for this. I also thank you for the parent university evening that you did with our community and really let your expertise to that my pleasure.
Filex Sanchez:So thank you for having me, thank you so much for coming, of course, anytime.
David Sciarretta:Thanks for joining us on the Hangout Podcast. You can send us an email at podcastinfo at protonme. Many thanks to my daughter, daughter Maya, for editing this episode. I'd also like to underline that this podcast is entirely separate from my day job and, as such, all opinions expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thanks for coming on in and hanging out.