Ricardo de Anda- Civil rights lawyer
This interview is a little different from the others I have posted so far. Usually they are conducted via email, questions are sent, answered and returned. Copy, paste and paint. Civil rights lawyer Ricardo de Anda, however, had other ideas. Upon receiving my mile long list of questions , de Anda wrote back one line.
“ Call me!”
I groaned, not that, please not that, not the phone. My grasp of the English language is much better served thru the written word. Since I was young the coherent sentences that form in my head have had a tragic way of falling into a tangled mess by the time they hit air, tumbling over each other like lion cubs, often leaving the recipient of my wildly intelligent thoughts confused! My husband was kind enough to point this out to me the other day when, during an experiment in better communication, he mentioned that he often didn’t understand a word I was saying! Bad speaking skills aside there was also the intimidation factor to consider. A pin up of mine since 2018, I discovered Ricardo on Twitter when news of children being separated from their parents at the US border first started leaking out and I began my own protest. One of my main go to’s for information during the short lived media frenzy, Ricardo gave intimate person by person accounts of his clients, of mothers and fathers having their children taken from them at the border and not knowing where they were or if they would ever see them again. Working with immigrant rights and refugee groups Ricardo was at the forefront of the campaign to find their children, bring them back together and fight for their rights, under US Law, to seek asylum, together.
None of this work was part of the plan Ricardo had started putting into action a few months earlier. After a long and successful career as a commercial litigator in Laredo, Texas, Ricardo was getting set to retire and had begun winding down his company. Then two things happened that shook the arm chair ready De Anda off this well travelled path.
“ First Trump got elected,” he said, “ Oh shit! I’m gonna have to keep working for another four years. I can’t drop out now!” he laughed, “Then the family separation crisis happened and it just tore the heart out of me.“
During his years as a lawyer Ricardo had practiced pro bono civil rights cases on the side, such as working with the immigrants who got targeted by vigilante groups along the border in the 90’s. It was this type of law, he said, of helping those most in need that was going to end up being what defined his life. Helping reunite children and parents separated at the border would be what ultimately brought him his greatest achievement.
“It flipped it all around,” he said, “ I came to a realization, oh this is why I went to law school! After 45 years I suddenly realized this is why that young hippy, who didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, gravitated in this direction because it was going to lead to this. There is just no greater satisfaction, the gratitude of a mother, you cannot compare it.”
On his first trip into the detention center, before any news about what was happening at the border had begun circulating, he discovered a group of mothers who had recently been separated from their children. As a man who had spent 45 years as a trial lawyer, nothing prepared him for the ambush of this experience.
“There was nothing to be done but cry,” said Ricardo, his voice choking up as he recalled the memory of that first meeting. Finding resources to help him Ricardo started tracking down their children, flying back n forth across the country. Many of the children, he said, refused to meet with him. To them he was just another suit in a strange land where already too much pain and suffering had happened to ones so young. To gain their trust he brought letters from their mothers, one mother drawing a bus which her child immediately recognized. Asking parents permission first he also hugged the children he met with, something many of them would not have experienced since their internment. Hugging was not permitted in the detention centers, not to the young toddlers who were inconsolable, not even between siblings. In the privacy of their meetings though, Ricardo allowed hugs. Two of his clients were sisters, who not being allowed to hug each other in the camps, wouldn’t let go of one another in their meetings with him. Ricardo realized early on that his efforts to reunite thousands of children was not going to be resolved purely by legal research but would also need public pressure. If this issue was going to be heard by the judges and the federal government, he was going to have to get a bigger, louder platform, one that they couldn’t ignore. He was going to have to, as he put it, “fame them!” As luck would have it around that time the infamous lawyer, Michael Avenatti, heard about the work Ricardo was doing with the families at the border. Wanting to help and most likely seeing the potential for a huge amount of publicity (for himself) Avenatti pulled De Anda into the media spot light.
“It was my 15 minutes of fame.” Ricardo chuckled. And it worked. With articles written in places like The LA Times about the separations and the work he was doing, public pressure to stop them began to grow. Protests sprung up around the globe as news of what was happening at the border spread. Global outrage thundered down on the Trump administration who for months justified their actions saying that refugees were common criminals, therefore their children could be taken from them. This, they said, was their way of deterring refugees from seeking asylum in America. The atrocities escalated. Parents began to be deported without their children. Promised they would be reunited on airplanes if they signed documents they didn’t understand, many of them landed back in the countries, they had run for their lives from, without their children. Mothers were frantic Ricardo said, quoting one of his desperate clients,“ Oh my god they can’t take me without my child.”
At this point the ACLU stepped in and judge Sabraw stopped the deportations but many families had by this point been separated by them. Ricardo now had to find the parents with little to no information about where they lived. Working with the Guatemalan consulate and local groups they would call the mayor of local villages or school principles to find out if any children didn’t come back to school and then find out where the parents lived. If the mayor of one village wasn’t missing anyone he could find out about other communities, talk to other mayors and find out if they were missing children. Through this grass routes word of mouth they were able to track down and reunite all of Ricardos clients. While those deportations have largely now stopped there are still thousands of children here, most of them languishing in detentions centers without legal representation, hoping to get a sponsor so they can plead their case outside of the camps. It is the camps themselves that worries De Anda the most, much more, he says, than the kids getting Covid-19. There is a lot more room in the children camps than the adult ones, they have the space to be kept 6 feet apart from each other. The camps come in 3 levels of severity. First there is a regular camp, guards dotted around, rules, bad food etc. If a child starts playing out though, being disruptive he/she will be sent to a, “Staff Secure Facility,” where each child has two sets of eyes on them all day to make sure they don’t run away or worse. Finally if the child continues to make trouble they go to a “Therapeutic Facility,” where there is a child psychiatrist on site to administer whatever kind of drugs they think suitable.
“Children,” Ricardo says gloomily, “are easier to manage when medicated.”
Ricardo has a 16 year old client in one of the therapeutic facilities, who cut her wrists. The doctors, he says, blame her upbringing for her behavior, they don’t even consider the fact that she has been in the center for 1.5 years and it is this that is making her crazy.
So while the pandemic rolled into town shutting down buildings and life as he knew it, work by no means has stopped for Ricardo. It did however make it little easier. Pre pandemic he was either flying around the country to meet with his clients or running from his office to the court house. Now, however, eighty percent of his time is spent at home with all his court cases and meetings happening over zoom. He doesn’t have to worry about booking flights or hotels, he just has to make sure to sign on at the right time and have a button down shirt ready to quickly throw over his more casual stay at home clothes.
“ You don’t get to strut your stuff, like lawyers like to do in their alligator shoes and fancy clothing, but at my age i’ve already done that and I don’t need to do it!“
Once a week he will go to his office to collect his mail or if he has a lot of serious writing work to do he will spend the day alone at the office.
“I’m leaning in and riding with the flow instead of struggling. I’m taking this pandemic very seriously and not treating life as normal.”
Right now he has 5 child clients and 10 adult clients. He is also picking up some land owner clients who are fighting the feds over using their land to build Trumps wall. Working from his ranch by a river, outside of Laredo, he has his daughter, son in law and grand child staying with him. His daughter, a curator in NYC and son in law, an activist/artist are now helping him with the issues at the border while his 1.5 year old grand daughter is bringing a huge smile to his voice.
Ricardo said it took about 3 months for them all to find a good balance living together. Things are easier now, they take it in turns to have their melt downs and blow ups!
“When one of us has one we can now say hey it’s ok it’s part of the process.” To blow off steam and calm down they all like to dance putting on “rush music” that really gets them going. “It moves the emotions thru the body.”
Ricardo says this time is a tremendous opportunity to see real change. Things are moving and we all need to take advantage of it. I asked him what he would have done differently if he was president and he said he would have led a national effort, a national testing and tracking/tracing of the virus rather than leaving it up to individual states and local authorities who don’t have the resources. He then cited the Polio pandemic of 1953, when he was just starting elementary school, as an example of how a government successful handled the outbreak, ultimately wiping out the disease. With the current resurgence of Covid-19 in America swiftly taking over each state again and a vaccine still far from being found, this kind of successful ending seems unlikely any time soon. Without a proper figurehead guiding the not so united states the only course of action to bring us out of this mess might be the same thing that Ricardo thinks will bring an end to the cruelty at the border, a new administration.
“Hopefully with a change of administration we can deal with it with a broad stroke. At the moment though it’s a guerrilla battle with one child at a time.”
Is it me or can this sentiment about one crisis be far too easily carried over to the other. I guess we will find out in November.
As for the experience of talking to one of my heroes on the dreaded phone. Well my self doubt made sure that the fear never really went away. When asking questions I cringed at the sound of my own voice, my eyeballs often rolling out of their sockets to hide under my desk in embarrassment for me. However snuggled in amongst the fear was also an unexpected excitement and wonder. Ricardo is charming, I could hear the twinkle in his eyes when he spoke. Listening to his many journeys, the obstacles he over came, the passion he had for what he did produced in me a pingpong of emotions, from tears and pain to laughter and utter disbelief at the cruelty in this world. Time passed quickly. The mummy has to work movie I put on for my girls finished at about the same time my conversation with de Anda did, my husband also arriving home from work as I danced into the living room high off the phone call. With words pouring excitedly out of my mouth I pirouetted around the room before skipping off into the kitchen leaving my husband and eldest daughter staring wide eyed in confusion at one another, neither of them knowing what the hell I had just been talking about.