Advocate for the Undocumented
Cynthia Santiago ’07 took note of the ICE officers stationed in the courthouse as she escorted the frightened immigrant couple through security and into the courtroom. The couple had been in the United States for decades with four US citizen children and no criminal record, but when their case was unexpectedly reopened, their previous attorney had dropped them. With the clock ticking on their case, they had reached out to Santiago with only a few days to act.
“That’s what’s happening now,” she said. “It’s having to walk with clients into this space where you know ICE is there and getting them back so they could go home safely.”
That day, Santiago was able to secure extra time to review the case and her clients were able to walk out of the courthouse without being detained, but these days, that’s never a guarantee.
Since opening her L.A.-based law firm in 2012, Santiago has seen an uptick in the urgency surrounding immigration cases, especially after the presidential election in November 2024.
“In my beginning years [as an attorney], I did see parents being taken by the police or ICE showing up at their door before people were heading out to work,” she said. But since the election, news coverage and social media have amplified the issue of immigration enforcement to a fever pitch.
“What that creates is a lot of fear and anxiety,” said Santiago, whose firm specializes in immigration. “So my work has not only been to give people knowledge about what to do if you’re detained by the police and talking about their options for their cases, but it’s about their fears and their anxiety.”
Santiago often finds herself advising clients on the phone after hours or on weekends, when she knows they will be home from work. An event in the news, such as an immigration raid, can trigger frantic questions. At other times, she’s on Zoom, talking to groups of undocumented workers about their options. Because so many undocumented individuals don’t understand immigration law, Santiago tries to fill gaps in information and help individuals get ahead of events and fix their immigration status if possible.
Earlier this year, she spoke to a group of a hundred parents who were afraid to take their kids to school. She’s also offered her services to hospital employees and union members. If her firm can’t take a case, they offer referrals. “Wherever there’s folks that want to know about what’s happening and how to protect the community, then I’m willing to help,” she said.
A Journey to Fighting Injustice
Santiago grew up in a working-class community of color in Santa Monica, where she attended high school, ironically, with Stephen Miller, the architect of the country’s current mass deportation policy. Her neighborhood was diverse, with a high concentration of African American and Latino families.
Her parents, from Guatemala and Mexico, now naturalized citizens, were among the first in their family to settle in the United States. She witnessed up close what it was like for them, working hard to support their families as the neighborhood experienced gentrification, lack of opportunity for youth, and disproportionate police harassment.
When Santiago was just nine years old, her brother was wrongfully incarcerated and her parents were not able to afford a private lawyer. The dehumanizing experience of navigating the prison industrial complex and visiting her brother had an impact, she said. While she had never met any attorneys and had no mentors to guide her, she knew she wanted to go to law school.
The first step on that path was Wesleyan, where she majored in the College of Social Studies and got involved with the student-led group known as WesPREP or Wesleyan Prisoner Resource Education Project. “That motivated me to continue my efforts to combat the prison industrial complex and to want to become an attorney that sees the effects of incarceration, mass incarceration, on our communities,” she said.
Shortly after passing the bar in 2012, Santiago opened her own firm with just $60 for a sign and business cards. Initially, she did outreach by going where her clients would be—at swap meets, festivals, churches, or schools—to talk to people about their situation and get a sense if she could help. Her team would drive a van throughout the state to reach the community. “There’s not a lot of attorneys that look like us,” she said. “I made that effort to also be in the communities where the representation was lacking and try to be that resource.”
With three full-time staff members, she now manages a load of more than 200 cases. Her firm represents victims of crime, such as assaults and domestic violence, as well as immigration. She often collaborates with grassroots immigrant rights organizations and other law firms to serve as co-counsel and as a resource for clients. She recently took the bar exam in Nevada to further her reach and assist clients there. “We make that effort to go to places where the resources are limited,” she said.
The Human Element of Mass Deportation
Much of Santiago’s work involves helping people to avoid the worst-case scenarios—detention and deportation. In one case, a man she represents has a few avenues to legalize his status, or at least try, including being married to a US citizen and having a daughter in the military who could petition on his behalf. But despite having no criminal record, he was detained at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center after being picked up in a raid. “Our fight right now is to get him home, back to his family and then be able to file the petitions necessary for him to get status,” she said.
While these cases are gut-wrenching, they also put a human element to the issue of deportation. “Now we’re seeing the story and the face and the image of who cleans cars, who is the labor at the Home Depot, who is the vendor that’s selling the food,” she said. “We don’t value that enough, who the people are that are providing for us and that are supporting us and that are part of our community.”
