This Lawyer Used To Deport Immigrants; Now She Defends Them

ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — If you ask her to speak from the heart, Marisel Rodriguez will tell you that she was never really cut out to help the U.S. Department of Homeland Security deport immigrants. It just wasn’t how she was raised.

The daughter of Puerto Rican parents, the veteran attorney has a "mixed" extended family: Dominican, Colombian, Mexican.

“One of my closest and dearest friends is Arabic,” she told Patch in a recent interview. “My entire life I've been surrounded by friends born outside of the U.S.”

Rodriguez – a co-founder and CEO of the New York City-based Rosario & Rodriguez law firm – originally reached out to Patch last month after her “heartbroken” father passed along our story about the plight of Catalino Guerrero, a law-abiding New Jersey grandfather who is facing possible deportation from the Newark ICE office.

• See related article: N.J. Immigrant And Grandpa Threatened With Deportation

Rodriguez – who was seeking contact information for Guerrero in an effort to offer him legal help — told Patch that she was a prosecutor with Homeland Security a few years ago and “was actually deporting people.”

“I now work in the private sector and help immigrants remain in the United States,” Rodriguez wrote.

But what could cause a former Assistant Chief Counsel for the Department of Homeland Security to turn her back on a promising career and devote her professional life to fighting the very agency that she once worked for?

‘I WANTED TO PROTECT SOCIETY’

Working for the feds, Rodriguez represented the U.S. government in deportation proceedings, appearing in court for hearings and cross-examining people who sought to remain in the country, all with the goal of weeding out those who didn’t fit the profile of an “acceptable” immigrant.

“Unlike criminal cases where the government has the burden, in immigration proceedings, it’s the [applicant] who has to establish they are eligible for and deserve an immigration benefit,” Rodriguez said. “Basically, it was my job to make them meet that burden.”

It was a logical gig for the Saint John's University alum, who graduated with a criminal justice degree and went on to battle drug trafficking and money laundering as the assistant district attorney with the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor of New York City for six years before joining the DHS.

But after just a year on the job, Rodriguez realized that there was something rotten in the state of Denmark.

“I honestly don't think I was a good fit for that position from the beginning,” she confided to Patch. “I went there because I wanted to be in court litigating cases every day. I wanted to continue to protect society from those violating laws. Except these people weren’t [criminals], they were mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands and wives of Americans.”

Rodriguez quickly found that a large number of the people she was grilling were actually “hard-working, non-criminal people” who paid their taxes and only wanted to support their families.

“These people left war-torn villages, were abused by their governments, or were just looking for a better life,” Rodriguez said. “I realized they weren’t ‘destroying’ our economy or society. They deserved to have a chance to stay.”

It wasn’t until she actually left the DHS that Rodriguez realized the extent of its “anti-immigrant climate,” she said.

“It’s like you were told every immigrant is lying or committing fraud,” she recalled. “I’m not saying [that attitude] was taught by the DHS, but the whole environment was negative.”

• See related article: N.J. Immigrants Are Taxpaying, Hardworking Residents, Study Says
• See related article: 5 Reasons Why Immigrants Make New Jersey Better

WORKING FOR A BETTER FUTURE

After deciding to quit the DHS, Rodriguez went to work for a Wall Street firm handling immigration matters.

“I met with people that were like those I had tried to deport before, and I realized how skewed my views were when I worked there,” she told Patch. “Although I enjoyed my co-workers and felt satisfied with the type of work I was doing, my boss was a different story. He asked me two days after I gave birth to my youngest son when I was coming back to the office.”

She never went back.

“A few months later, a former law school classmate and I decided to join together, and we opened our own firm,” Rodriguez said.

Since then, Rodriguez has dedicated her life to bringing people together instead of tearing them apart.

She told Patch about one particularly rewarding case, where she helped a woman reunite with her dying grandmother after missing the funerals of her 7-year-old son and her mother due to immigration-related worries.

“If she left the U.S., she would have been barred from entering for 10 years,” Rodriguez recalled. “She had her husband and two children here, but couldn’t return to her home country… She pleaded with me that she just wanted to see her grandmother before she died.”

Thanks to some shrewd legal maneuvering and compassion – after 15 years – the woman finally earned her green card in the nick of time and got her wish, Rodriguez said.

But not everyone is as lucky, she added.

“So many people are blinded by misinformation and fear,” Rodriguez emphasized. “More importantly, they refuse to hear people who have actual experiences with immigrants. They'd rather trust a report from their political party. The only thing I can encourage people to do is put yourself in an immigrant's shoes. Humble yourself and consider how difficult it would be to have to leave the only country you have known for most of your life. Imagine if it was your parent or sibling or friend who has their life here, they work, have no criminal record, but there is no law to help them stay.”

• See related article: Immigrant Turmoil Prompts Nationwide Protests: 'A Moral Obligation'
• See related article: ICE Agents Arrest Undocumented El Paso Woman As She Seeks Protective Order Against Abuser
• See related article: Law Enforcement Officials Apprehend Hundreds of Undocumented Immigrants Nationwide

Send feedback and news tips to eric.kiefer@patch.com

Photo: Marisel Rodriguez