Undaunted

“I didn’t know any undocumented attorneys. To me, it’s important to be open, because I want people to know it’s possible.”

During her first year at Santa Monica College, a classmate approached Mateo and asked her to sign a letter urging President George W. Bush to support the DREAM Act. Mateo had no idea what that was. Her classmate explained that the bill would give high school graduates brought to the States illegally as children a path to citizenship.

But Mateo felt the action was a success: They had shone a spotlight on a critical issue and reunited six young people who had grown up in the United States with their families; since then, none has been deported, and one has been granted asylum. A judge administratively closed Mateo’s own immigration case a year later.

“The experience left me feeling guilty: I had done something that people thought was crazy and was allowed to stay here,” she said. “But the other women detained at Eloy couldn’t do the same thing.”

Barred

Just six days after her release, Mateo started law school at Santa Clara University. Culture shock hit her, as classmates stopped to ask, “Wait, are you that girl?” She struggled with guilt about not being able to actively help less privileged immigrants and a sense of not belonging in the competitive environment. Mateo thought about leaving, but a pep talk from her contracts professor, Michelle Oberman, reminded her of why she was there: This was her dream, and she could use it to help others.

“Mateo is the single most collaborative yet inspirational student I’ve ever taught,” Oberman recalls. “It’s like she leads from within, not in front or behind—there’s a sense of moral centeredness.”

Mateo spent summers clerking at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, where she helped survivors of domestic violence with their immigration cases, and California Rural Legal Assistance, where she supported impact litigation efforts. During her 3L year, she represented clients in workers’ rights cases at the Katharine & George Alexander Community Law Center, where she remains a volunteer. These experiences cemented a desire to work in direct service.

After Mateo graduated, she fell ill with thoracic outlet syndrome, a condition in which pinched nerves caused excruciating pain. After four months recuperating, she took the bar and then started working for Pasadenans Organizing for Progress, a local social justice organization. When she passed the exam in May 2017, she asked de León, the senator who would eventually appoint her to the state advisory committee, to swear her in.

Without DACA protection Mateo decided to focus on the privilege she did have: using her law degree.

But in January 2018, two days before President Trump was inaugurated, Mateo got some bad news. Despite support from law school professors and congressional representatives, her DACA application had been denied for the second time. Her decision to leave the country in 2013 had helped others, but it had extracted a personal cost. Now, no legal organization could hire her, and she was technically at risk of being deported.

“I cried so much. I didn’t know how to explain to my parents that everything I had done would affect me,” she said. “But I never felt like I made a mistake. It was the right thing to do.”

Mateo decided to focus on the privilege she did have: using her law degree. In 2014, California became the first of three states to allow undocumented people to practice law. That meant Mateo would be one of the first few undocumented attorneys in the country. In February 2018, she opened a private practice that focuses on workers’ compensation and immigration cases. Eventually, she hopes to represent clients in federal court and undertake impact litigation. Mateo says she doesn’t know any other undocumented lawyers without DACA who are open about their status. “When I was in college, I didn’t know any undocumented attorneys,” she said. “To me, it’s important to be open because I want people to know it’s possible.”

By serving on the California Student Opportunity and Access Program Project Grant Advisory Committee, a role without term limits, Mateo hopes to draw on her own experience to devise creative ways of maximizing resources for the estimated 72,300 undocumented students who attend California’s public colleges and universities.

Mateo trusts that her status as an attorney and political appointee provides protection against arrest and deportation. But with no clear path to legal residency or citizenship, she continues to live with a giant question mark over her head. When she visits clients at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, she can see Mexico just over the border, and she thinks of the relatives she may never see again. “It’s close, and yet so far, so very far for me,” she says.

But she doesn’t dwell on her uncertain future. As always, there are short-term goals: college, law school, the bar, her next case. She remains faithful to the belief that attracted her parents to the United States in the first place: “If you work hard and show people that you want to excel, your work is going to be rewarded. You can build the future and life you want.”

KATIA SAVCHUK is a journalist whose work has appeared in Forbes, Cosmopolitan, the Washington Post, and elsewhere.