The Boardhawk Podcast

Episode 4: Immigration raids and Denver Public Schools sues the feds

• Alan Gottlieb

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Alexis Menocal Harrigan:

today we are talking about recent immigration activities in our communities and the effect it's having on DPS families. We're also welcoming another guest today onto the podcast, Jorge Castaneda, who is a Denver based immigration attorney. Before I introduce Jorge, I'd like to bring listeners up to speed on the recent events that have taken place over the last couple of days. On Wednesday we're recording this podcast on Friday, but last Wednesday, DPS became the first school district that we know of in the nation to sue the Trump administration over its immigration policies. The lawsuit attempts to block immigration enforcement actions. In and around schools under previous administration policies going back decades, schools have largely been off limits since they are considered protected areas or sensitive locations. On January 20th, the Trump administration rescinded Biden administration guidelines, which essentially stated that people should have access to basic and fundamental services like health care, food, shelter, education. So it limited immigration enforcement activities in and around hospitals, shelters, social service centers, places of worships. Places of worship, excuse me, schools and other places that children gather like childcare centers, playgrounds, rec centers, bus stops, etc. By rescinding the policy which protects schools, the lawsuit states, quote, DPS is hindered in fulfilling its mission of providing education and life services to the students who are refraining from attending DPS schools for fear of immigration enforcement actions. Occurring on DPS school grounds before the news of the lawsuit came out. Alan and I actually were already planning on talking about the immigration activities around schools. So we had previously sent a list of questions over to DPS about the impact of immigration activities on students and families. The questions didn't ask about the lawsuit. However, many of their responses, which we'll share in this podcast episode. are still very timely for this discussion. Finally I just want to share that this is a deeply personal issue to me. I am the proud daughter of immigrants from Mexico. When I was born, neither of my parents were documented. If they were born in a different generation, they may be considered dreamers. Since they came here as children without any say of their own. When I heard about the Trump executive order attempting to eliminate birthright citizenship, I obviously felt some kind of way about that as somebody who would be considered someone who had birthright citizenship taken away. I also know what it's like to have a parent detained by ICE. When I was pregnant with my first child and in my third trimester, my father was detained and held at the GEO Aurora Detention Center. I did everything in my power to fight his deportation. During that time, my son was actually born, and the first time he met his grandpa was at the Aurora Detention Center with a glass partition between them. I'm happy to say my dad is still very much here in Colorado with us, and he sees his grandkids on a regular basis. So in that spirit, I am eager to dive into this discussion. I'm thrilled to introduce someone who I met several years ago when we were in the same fellowship cohort within the Latino Leadership Institute. Big shout out to the LLI, Joel Martinez and team for training up some of Denver's fiercest Latino leaders. Jorge, I'm going to do a quick intro on you and then I'll turn it over for, ask the first question. So Jorge Castaneda is the founder and owner of Castaneda Law. He is a licensed attorney in Arizona and Colorado and has been practicing law for over 20 years. He received his bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of San Diego and graduated from Arizona State University College of Law. Jorge began his legal career in 2001 at the Maricopa County Attorney's Office. In 2006, he went into private practice where he began practicing criminal defense and immigration law. Jorge is fluently bilingual and has extensive experience in both criminal and immigration courts. He was born in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. His family immigrated when he was a child and he grew up in Nogales, Arizona. His personal background gives Jorge a unique perspective on the issues that affect the immigrant community. He has made his professional goal to provide honest and straightforward representation for his clients. Welcome, Jorge. Thanks so much for being here.

Jorge Castañeda:

Thank you for having me, Alexis. It's great to be here.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan:

All right. First question before we jump in to DPS, Denver, and the lawsuit, I want to just take a step back more broadly and ask you, given that you are working so with immigrant families, what reaction did you see? Once Trump was elected in November and then the reaction if it shifted at all once he took office in January, I

Jorge Castañeda:

think the more pronounced reaction was after he took office. I think post election. I don't remember a heavy reaction from the immigrant community that I come in contact with. Obviously, it was always a possibility that he might be elected a second time. I think there was quite a bit of shock that it happened, especially here in Colorado. But the real reaction was after he was inaugurated and after the executive orders that came the overall reaction has been one of fear and confusion and a lot of misinformation. But I think the over, overreaching reaction has been fear. I get questions in line with what we're talking about today. I get questions about people asking me. If their school aged kids should have some kind of proof of status and things of that nature. So people are just really scared. And that really took off after the inauguration. And after the executive orders, my phone's been ringing off the hook I've been doing like talking like here today. I've done several talks to several groups about what's been happening. So it's been pretty overwhelming since the inauguration.

Alan Gottlieb:

Thanks for, Hey, I'm curious about what your reaction was when you heard earlier this week about the fact that DPS had filed this lawsuit and request for a restraining order against the government.

Jorge Castañeda:

It's hard for me to say what my reaction is because I don't have a ton of faith in the court system at this point. By that, I mean that they filed a lawsuit which is great and they filed for a temporary injunction, which is great. Also, I think it's necessary. But I think if you really look at the lawsuit, what they're essentially arguing is. That the Trump administration didn't go about this the right way, which I've seen them do in their first the first time he was elected, and they did it again at this time. But essentially the lawsuit boils down to they didn't follow the proper steps to revoke the the designation for schools. So realistically, at least from my reading of the lawsuit, even if the lawsuit succeeds, all the administration would have to do is do it correctly. And they could still remove the provisions in the law, in the in the memos and the provisions that, that revoke the status of the schools. So I guess it's what had to happen. I'm glad DPS did it. I'm proud that they did it, but I don't think it solves the problem in any way.

Alan Gottlieb:

Okay, thanks. And I actually have a follow up directly to that. But first, just we did reach out to DPS and get some information from them. And there's definitely been an impact, particularly on individual schools on attendance since January 20th and since the raids last week here in the Denver area and in Denver, specifically, some schools that have seen attendance fall below 75%. One school, it actually fell below 70%. Attendance Chronic absenteeism has been a bit of a problem ever since COVID, but this is pronounced and much, much more intense than just that general problem. But just to follow up with what you just said, Jorge what did rescinding those previous orders protecting schools do in practice within the Denver area, particularly for families with school aged children?

Jorge Castañeda:

I think it's essentially what you just stated. You just talked about the lack of attendance or lower attendance at schools. I think rescinding that made it. First of all, I think a lot of Children that are undocumented, their parents were hesitant to send them to school. Even if the Children are not undocumented, if they haven't undocumented parents they don't feel safe picking up their kids, dropping them off, things of that nature. So essentially rescinding the designation has made it to where anyone who has any kind of association with being undocumented parents, undocumented children, undocumented refugees, things of that nature. Anybody who does not have status, it made it to where they did not feel safe going to school. And as you mentioned, I think it's had a profound effect on attendance and possibly the mental health of those children, not possibly, probably surely the mental health of those children.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan:

Thanks. We know DPS is providing trainings to schools to administrators. They're giving toolkits. They're doing everything. I think they feel within their power to equip families with information. But beyond that, are there legal protections that schools can invoke to ensure that they remain safe spaces for all students, regardless of immigration status,

Jorge Castañeda:

There's legal protections in the sense that, Constitutional protections that everybody in this country has, but I don't think there's any right to be designated a safe space. So I don't know what legal protections of school. I think schools have done as much as they can, like they filed this lawsuit. If they are providing some kind of services or things of that nature to help people, but ultimately. If push comes to shove, I don't know how much a school can actually do legally in that sense I don't have a great answer for that because I, again, this designation as the lawsuit kind of explains, you go through the timeline it's only been since 1993. So it's not a right. It's not like the constitution protects this or something of that nature. It's like you're appealing to the decency of an administration that has no decency. So it's yeah. Ultimately, I feel in my personal opinion, this is just if it gets pushed, it's going to come to a head. And I don't know how much recourse the schools have. Honestly,

Alan Gottlieb:

can I ask a quick follow up Alexis? And that is DPS and the answers that they gave us to our questions. They said they, they would invoke for the Privacy Act and other things and not let and they've instructed their staff not to let ice come into their schools. Again, I Talking about no decency, if push comes to shove and an armed, armored immigration agent walks into your school and says, sorry, we're walking in, somebody standing behind a desk with a button to push, doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of recourse there either. Is that right?

Jorge Castañeda:

Yeah, I think you've hit the nail right on the head. I think. If it gets to, and I don't know if it will get to that point, but if it does I don't know what the recourse is. I, we're in a lot of ways where we've said this a bazillion times, I've been hearing it since, he was elected the first time, we're like in uncharted territory, because realistically, Even, we're talking about this injunction and if the injunction gets granted, and if they don't follow the injunction, what's the recourse? What is going to happen? Probably nothing. So yeah, I think I think your point is spot on that if, we try to arm and equipped staff with knowing their rights and doing the right things. And I think that's great. And that's what should be done. But, I'm just hesitant to to say that it'll have an effect, I guess is the best way to say it.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan:

Yeah. And emotions would be running so high if you were walking into a school you're, you do have a warrant signed by a judge and then you have these immigration agents coming in. What I worry about and what I wonder is. What happens, if you're in a third grade classroom, you have a teacher who doesn't agree, like what happens when the teachers then try to intervene or you have teachers taking maybe actions of civil disobedience. So that's certainly something I'm I'm worried about is Denver. One of the things I love about our city is we are not afraid to protest. We are not afraid to have sit ins. We are not afraid to stand up for Positions of authority. And so I think what really makes me nervous is when you have folks coming in and walking into a school. Potentially teachers aren't necessarily going to sit by. I like quietly and let their students get taken away. So not really a question, but as a parent, just a concern. And then what is the lasting impact on the teachers and students? Should that worst case scenario happen?

Jorge Castañeda:

Yeah, I think what your scenario is a worst case scenario. The idea of ice. Coming into a school and I would be very surprised if that actually happened. I think the removal of the safe spaces is more geared towards the parents of people that are at schools. I'd be really surprised if they actually tried to detain children who are undocumented because it brings up a whole bunch of issues with custody and where do you take them and who's got custody of the children. So I don't think I, me personally I've been wrong a million times, but I don't think it'll ever get to the point where they're actually going into schools and saying Hey, Timmy, are you undocumented? I don't think that's what we're going to get to, but. I understand what you're saying. If it gets to that point, what's the recourse? I don't know. I don't know.

Alan Gottlieb:

Have you heard from parents that they fear that kind of a

Jorge Castañeda:

scenario? I think parents do. And I try to tell them that it's not that simple. Realistically, I just wouldn't know what to do with children. First of all, children don't have identifications, right? So how would you even identify the children? So there's always a problem

Alan Gottlieb:

with that before when they separated. Families, right?

Jorge Castañeda:

That was at the border. That's a completely different situation. Those children are presenting themselves at the border. At that point, the government has no choice but to take custody of them because there's nowhere to send them, right? But these children are at schools inside the country. I think it's a very different conversation what happened at the border than this. But there's no I lost my train of thought there, but I think parents are afraid of it, but I just don't see, I don't see how it would happen because what do you do with the Children? Where do you take them? So detention center and who's liable for that and who's got custody of them and how long you keep them. There's all these questions. Did it happen? I don't know. Things could happen. I'd be really surprised though. It's not worth the trouble to grab a couple of kids that are undocumented. It's just not worth the trouble to a government agency. I think.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan:

I hope you're right. And at PR would be terrible for the Trump administration, but I'm also not, I don't think, in some ways they might just say, this is actually better because we're standing up to. Progressive cities like Denver and school districts like Denver public schools, but I absolutely hope that is the case. And it makes sense to me. All right, I'm looking at our next questions here. So we talked a little bit about mixing. I want to deviate for a second from the lawsuit in DPS and just get your perspective on Trump's executive order trying to rescind birthright citizenship. Do you think this has any real legs? This is constitutional or is it just like political grandstanding political theater?

Jorge Castañeda:

My, I think my gut and like my instinct is that it's political theater really. But I again, I don't have a lot of faith in the court. So if the Supreme Court for whatever reason that gets up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court says no, actually birthright citizenship is not a constitutional protection for X, Y, Z reason. Would I be completely surprised? No. Again I have very little faith in the Supreme Court. And the court system getting us out of any of these kind of problems, honestly. But having said that, I'd be really surprised if it happened in the sense that it would, the ramifications would be so huge. You're talking about people, how many millions of people that have birthright citizenship, and then what are you going to go through and figure out how much whose parents were legal, not legal when it just seems like too much hassle, I think it's political grandstanding, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. When it gets up to the courts,

Alexis Menocal Harrigan:

I sure hope so, too.

Alan Gottlieb:

I do some work for a immigrant advocacy organization, actually mostly for African immigrants. And I heard from them this week that a number of their members were detained in the last, during the raids who have legal status of one kind or another and are still being held out in Aurora. So have you heard about things like that happening? And if so, like what recourse do people have to get folks out of that situation if they've got documentation that they're legitimately in the country?

Jorge Castañeda:

That's a, no, I have not seen that happen. When you say it's hard because I think one of the biggest issues with immigration law and discussing immigration issues is that there's a lot of misnomers about what things mean. So when you say that people have legal status, does that mean they have legal permanent residence? Does that mean they have an asylum application pending? Does that mean I'd have to get into the weeds as to exactly what these people's legal status is. Because as far as I know, anybody who's a legal permanent resident, a naturalized citizen, things of that nature, are not being detained. But I could be wrong. I haven't heard of it. I'm on listservs with the other immigration lawyers. I have, I know that they'd be blowing up if that was actually happening. Sometimes I think when we have these conversations, and sometimes there's a confusion as to what it means to have legal status and be here legally. So I don't know. I have not heard about that. If you have some specific of like information, that'd be interesting to know. But be surprised if those people are legal permanent residents that they've been detained for two weeks. That'd be really strange.

Alan Gottlieb:

I can reach out offline and see if I can get the details. My guess is that they have pending asylum requests that they came in and then asked for asylum. But I, because I know they, during the major influx that happened over the last couple of years, it certainly wasn't only people from Latin America. There were quite a significant number of new arrivals from all over Africa as well. Yeah.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan:

And then it does happen, but it is rare. When my father was detained, he had his green card. He's an LPR, legal permanent resident. So it does happen. And unfortunately, I do think we do hear these stories in the news nationally where, oh, somebody who's a U. S. citizen got caught up, but I'm hoping that are, those are the rare circumstances and not not something we're seeing on a regular basis.

Jorge Castañeda:

Yeah. Yeah. It's true. A legal permanent resident can be detained, but they can be detained if they've committed certain crimes. It's not like they can't just detain you at your legal permanent resident. Hey, we're going to detain you for no reason. There are, you can get your legal permanent residents to revoke that, that can happen. And I've handled many cases that way. But what I'm saying is I have not seen somebody who has not been convicted of a crime and is a legal permanent resident get detained. I have not seen that.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan:

Okay. Thank you. What resources, legal or otherwise, do you think are most accessible to families who are at risk or worried about potential detention or deportation?

Jorge Castañeda:

I would normally say remain, but apparently their funding got frozen. There's not a lot. Unfortunately I know that there's some nonprofits that try to help. I am the board chair of a nonprofit called Rise. Which works primarily in the Aurora and we have a lot of refugees and people we do mostly educational equity work, but we provide help also navigating immigration situations in some instances, but there's not a lot. One of the biggest. Issues with immigration laws that there's no, there's a right to an attorney or to legal representation, but there's no public defender's office. So if you want an attorney and immigration law, you have to pay for one. And if you don't have money to pay for one, if you're a refugee, if you're you're fleeing your country. you probably won't have money to pay for a lawyer. And what happens is, if you really think about it in the broad sense what the administration is doing is essentially removing the little bit of legal recourse legal help that immigrants could get without paying, which is things that organizations like remain things of that nature and taking that away. So they're making it to where there's no. access to lawyers, basically, unless you have somebody in your family who can call a lawyer, call somebody like me, say, Hey, this is my cousin, my uncle, whatever. So I would suggest looking for nonprofits that do that type of work. But other than that, you have to find a lawyer on your own. It was that remain was at the detention center, for example. And I keep saying remain, like everybody knows what it is, the Rocky mountain. immigrant advocacy network. Hope I didn't mess that up. But they did a lot of work with helping undocumented people and people in custody and just teaching them their rights and going through cases and trying to help them. They didn't do a ton of representation. They did a lot, but they couldn't represent everybody obviously. But my understanding is they're not operating at this point. I don't know if they're back offline because of the funding freezes. So there's not a lot, unfortunately. Have a good immigration lawyer in your phone book, or your cell phone.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan:

Yeah, that's that's really disheartening to hear. I I sit on a board of a local nonprofit that primarily serves the Latino community. And for the same reasons you said, we, we reached out to immigration attorneys to basically have them on speed dial in case things do come up for our clients. And I would venture to guess. Many other Denver based nonprofits who are in similar situations serving Latino communities are doing the same. Who, who are our three or four attorneys will call should one of our clients or one of our our people walk in and say, Hey, where do I go for help? So it's a lot of like piecemeal figuring it out. A lot of networking and yeah it's really,

Jorge Castañeda:

you have to know somebody or have somebody like you said on call or somebody you trust to say, Hey, look, you can call this person and they'll try to help. But even, those of us that do this kind of work, like Our capacity is pretty much at a maximum for the most part especially the last couple of weeks with so many phone calls, so many consultations, so many things like that. So yeah it's a perfect storm of denying almost access to legal representation and upping the number of people that are in proceedings, which is. That's obviously intentional.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan:

It's hard to not feel that this is not done by design.

Jorge Castañeda:

It's definitely by design. It's definitely by design.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan:

I don't have any more questions, but I do want to I have one. I

Alan Gottlieb:

do have one final, if that's okay. Please. It just came into my head, which is simply, Jorge when you talk to, or if you talk to, Parents or a parent who is undocumented or whose Children are undocumented and they are fearful about sending their Children to school. What are you telling them? Or would you tell them about whether they should feel comfortable doing it or not?

Jorge Castañeda:

My honest answer to that is that I don't think I'm in a position to tell him what to do with their situation because as an attorney, as someone who practices in this area of law, like my instinct would be to say, Hey, you probably won't have a problem because realistically, you could have problem walking down the street if you're undocumented, whatever the case may be. But those kinds of decisions are big. And I, it's hard to tell somebody I'm not in their shoes. So I, it's hard for me to say, yeah, don't worry about it. Go to school, drop them off. Nothing's going to happen. There's no way. And then it happens. And you're like, why did I, why did I do that? So it's really. It's outside the legal scope, honestly, it's more of a personal decision that I would normally tell my clients. Look, this is what I think. I don't think this will happen. I don't think you'll have any issues. Your child needs to go to school. But ultimately, I leave that up to the parent, because if they get detained, and their child doesn't have anybody else I'm not going to care for their children. And it's horrible for me to tell somebody to go do something that risky. If I don't know what could happen in the end,

Alexis Menocal Harrigan:

thanks for sharing that. Are there any final thoughts or departing words you want to leave our listeners with? Before we sign off,

Jorge Castañeda:

I think I've been practicing immigration law for a really long time. And it is amazing to me the amount of ignorance that exists about immigration. On both sides. Honestly there's a lot of ignorance. There's a lot of Misinformation social media has made it a thousand times worse, especially with people fortunately with the immigrant community they hear something they tell it to the next person. And then you have people saying, crazy things that aren't actually happening. And it's akin to kicking a wasp's nest with respect to what's happened in the last couple of weeks and since the inauguration but I think that the thing I would tell people is that to actually talk to somebody who works in this line of work there's so many opinions and so many ignorant opinions out there about immigration. And you do it correctly. Why can't they do it legally? My grandpa, like that nonsense about, it's not that simple. I'm a US citizen. I'm a naturalized US citizen. I was born in a foreign country. My three of my four grandparents were born in Mexico. I wasn't born here. None of my family was born here, but I'm a US citizen. Why? Because my great, my grandma on my mom's side was an American. The only reason. So it's not because I, did it the right way or I did some special thing and I waited in line. No, it was just like circumstance. That's all it is. It's luck half the time. So I would just say. Try to educate yourself about immigration before you try to spout spouse opinions that are ignorant and don't really have anything to do with the reality of what's going on. That's the most important thing. And I know it's going to go on deaf ears because who's got time to learn about immigration. They'd rather just yell and scream and say, Oh, this or that. But it's a defining issue, I think, at least in my lifetime. At least definitely in the last 20 years or so and it's still amazing to me how much ignorance there is with regard to this subject.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan:

Thank you so much, Jorge, and thank you for all that you're doing in our community and even beyond the immigration work your service to Denver students and Aurora students as well. We really appreciate you being on.

Alan Gottlieb:

Thank you for having me. Yeah, we really do appreciate it. And thanks so much. And Alexis and I will be back in a couple of weeks with another podcast. Things keep happening. So who knows what the topic will be next time, but thank you so much for today. Thanks Alexis. And we will talk to you all soon.