Documentary “From Here/From There” explores the movement to protect immigrant rights and the future of DACA
A still from the documentary “From Here / From There,” featuring the various identities of Luis Cortes Romero. Courtesy: Lauren & Ashley Fundora / Double Feature, Co.
As immigration continues to be at the forefront of political discussion, Luis Cortes Romero remains hopeful that the movement to protect immigrant rights will prevail.
“I don’t always have faith in governments, but I do have faith in people,” Cortes Romero said. “We’ve seen in the history of the United States that progress is made when people show up for each other. Right now, immigrants, who continue to contribute so much to the country, are fighting for their rights, and I have faith in people that change will happen.”
Luis Cortes Romero was an all-American kid from Redwood City, California, with the dream of selling candy to fund a middle school trip to Europe. Although he raised the most money in his class, his mother told him he couldn’t go. Cortes Romero was undocumented. Born in Mexico and without the necessary paperwork, he was unable to obtain a passport. When his father tried to legalize his status, he was instead picked up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and deported. Cortes Romero’s once close-knit family wasn’t the same.
Growing up without legal status made it difficult for Cortes Romero to find a sense of belonging. Everything changed when he reconnected with his roots and culture through the Chicano Studies program at San Jose State University. This experience inspired him to apply to law school at the University of Idaho, leading him on a journey to become the first undocumented immigrant attorney to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
New documentary explores a historic Supreme Court case
Cortes Romero’s life transformed in 2012 when former President Barack Obama issued an executive order implementing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The program provides driver’s licenses, two-year permits to work and study, and temporary protection from deportation for eligible immigrants who came to the U.S. as children.
As a DACA recipient, Cortes Romero received legal work authorization and was able to obtain a license to practice law. Today, he is a managing partner at Novo Legal Group in Seattle, where he focuses on immigration litigation.
His story is told in the documentary film, “From Here/From There (De Aquí/De Allá),” directed by Marlene “Mo” Morris. In 2019, Cortes Romero joined a legal team and DACA-recipient plaintiffs in Washington, D.C., to challenge President Donald Trump’s decision to rescind DACA. It was the first time in U.S. history that an undocumented immigrant attorney addressed the Supreme Court.
“We wanted to make sure that the way that this case was being fought and presented in the court reflected in the efforts on the ground in the immigrant rights movement,” Cortes Romero said. “There’s a mistaken assumption that immigration is just a Latino issue. We need to remind people that when other non-Latino Dreamers and immigrants see this movement move forward, they see themselves represented in it.”
A former immigration lawyer, Morris spent nearly five years filming Cortes Romero’s daily life as he prepared for the case and awaited the Supreme Court’s ruling. She collaborated with a team of storytellers whose expertise in filmmaking and firsthand experience as immigrants ensured the documentary was presented with accuracy and authenticity.
“The main objective of this film was to offer a perspective of an immigrant experience. The emphasis was on Luis and his family’s journey and the various things that the immigration system thrusts on him and his community,” Morris said. “We hope that people who are undocumented or have DACA, like Luis, feel they can speak out and re-engage in the fight to retain their rights and ensure others can receive them in the future.”
The Supreme Court overturned Trump’s termination of DACA on June 18, 2020. Despite the victory depicted in the film, a seven-year-long litigation challenging DACA continues.
Luis Cortes Romero stands outside the U.S. Supreme Court after the oral argument in the Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California case regarding DACA on November 12, 2019. Courtesy: Tom Kaufman
The future of DACA left in limbo
DACA emerged from the organizing efforts of immigrants who demanded the passage of the Development Relief Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act in 2001, which sought to grant a pathway to citizenship to immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. The DREAM Act was never passed into law. However, years of protests, sit-ins, and marches put increased pressure on the Obama administration to implement something similar, DACA.
While many have benefited from the program, DACA is costly and does not provide a pathway to citizenship. Individuals must meet eligibility requirements that some say impose problematic distinctions between “good and deserving” and “bad and undeserving” immigrants. If approved, recipients are expected to uphold certain mandates to renew their DACA status and pay a fee between $550 and $605 every two years.
As of January 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled the DACA program unlawful in Texas but allowed it to remain in effect for current beneficiaries across 49 states. DACA renewal requests remain in effect; however, the court decision has not yet been appealed to the Supreme Court, leaving over 500,000 recipients uncertain about their legal protections and vulnerable to deportation.
“There are a few opportunities and legal pathways for people to legalize their status. Congress needs to recognize that if it intends to fix the problem of an undocumented immigrant population, then it is essential that legal pathways be permitted and welcomed,” Morris said.
The “politician’s playbook”
Trump issued multiple immigration executive orders within the first month of his second term, including changes to temporary protected status (TPS) designations, an end to birthright citizenship for certain infants born in the U.S., and the rescission of a "protected areas" policy that prohibits immigration enforcement action in sensitive areas such as schools, hospitals, and places of worship. His administration also replaced Customs and Border Protection (CBP) One—an app previously used to process asylum claims at the U.S.-Mexico border—with CBP Home, which encourages immigrants to self-deport.
“We’ve had a version of mass deportations under the first Obama administration,” Cortes Romero said. “But the way that it’s going to look under the current Trump administration is that they’re going to make life very difficult for folks here through terror tactics, where people are going to want to leave on their own.”
Strategies to restrict immigration and spread fear among immigrant communities are straight from the “politician playbook,” Cortes Romero explained.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first law in the U.S. that prohibited immigration solely on the basis of race. The Dwight Eisenhower administration initiated a federal program in 1954 that forcibly displaced nearly 1.2 million Mexican immigrants in California, Arizona, and Texas, including individuals who were legally present in the country. In 1996, former President Bill Clinton enacted the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). The IIRIRA enhanced immigration enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border and imposed criminal penalties on immigrants without legal documentation, laying the foundation for the massive deportation machine that exists today. The list goes on.
Human rights advocates argue that U.S. immigration policies neglect the systemic causes and patterns of migration. Instead, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle continue to prioritize surveillance and the militarization of borders while offering minimal pathways to citizenship or asylum. This approach, rooted in a long history of racism and white supremacy, has inadvertently encouraged unauthorized entries and overstayed visas, perpetuating an endless cycle of mass incarceration, immigration detention, and deportation.
“The most pressing reform that the U.S. immigration system needs is a smart-on-immigration approach, as opposed to a tough-on-immigration approach. Those are two different things, and the tough-on-immigration approach is not working and has not worked,” Cortes Romero said.
Luis Cortes Romero at the U.S. Supreme Court. Courtesy: Vicente Franco
Impacts on the Filipino community
Mass deportations and stricter immigration policies set forth by the Trump administration have sent ripples through the Filipino immigrant community, particularly following the arrest of Lewelyn Dixon, a green card holder who had legal permanent status in the U.S. for 50 years.
Jose Manuel G. Romualdez, the Philippine ambassador to the U.S., recently warned that a green card is a privilege and holding one is not a right and can be revoked. This statement comes five months after he advised Filipinos without legal status to self-deport rather than wait for deportation. Community organizers say Romualdez’s comments have created unnecessary panic and fear instead of informing immigrants of their legal rights.
The U.S. is home to the largest population of Filipinos living abroad, with approximately 2 million immigrants. According to an estimate from the Migration Policy Institute in 2019, nearly 400,000 Filipino immigrants are undocumented, while about 2,800 are DACA recipients as of 2023. Key factors driving their migration include economic, political, and agricultural uncertainties in the Philippines.
“The experience of undocumented Filipinos to other groups feels disjointed in general, and that it stems from the over-colonization of the Philippines,” said Nicole Solis-Sison, producer of “From Here/From There.”
Filipino migration is shaped by a deep-rooted history of U.S. intervention in the Philippines. After three hundred years of Spanish colonization, Filipinos declared their independence in 1898. That was until the U.S. annexed the Philippines, along with Puerto Rico and Guam. What followed was a brutal war of colonization, after which mass migration from the Philippines to the U.S. began. Its impacts on the archipelago are still evident today through the presence of U.S. military bases, an American-style education system, and the export of Filipino migrant labor.
Tago ng Tago (TNTs), meaning “hiding and hiding,” is a term used to refer to Filipinos without legal status and the ways in which they navigate their presence in the U.S.—invisible and as silent as possible. Stigmas and feelings of shame for being “undocumented” make it difficult for community members to speak about their experiences.
Born in the Philippines, Solis-Sison came to the U.S. as an asylum seeker. She is a founding member of the Undocumented Filmmakers Collective, which centers the expertise of undocumented people not only as sources of stories but also as creators, artists, and audiences in the film industry.
"I had trouble telling people that I was an asylum refugee and that I am a DACA recipient, but now I wear that as a badge of honor—you know, these are my scars, and I love them," Solis-Sison said. "At the same time, it's important to discuss immigration and the undocumented experience to unearth how they affect us as a community. Refusing to acknowledge this reality is a form of dismissal and an acceptance of colonization."
A tool for change
Studies have shown how negative, stereotypical portrayals of immigrants in mass media and digital platforms influence public opinion. From supporting immigrant storytellers to providing educational materials to journalists, organizations like Comm/Unity, Define American, and the Undocumented Filmmakers Collective strive for fair and accurate coverage that humanizes immigrants.
“We are more than our status,” Solis-Sison said. “To show our humanity in the greater media industry, we must first humanize ourselves. We need to believe that we are worthy of love, worthy of fighting for that dream job, worthy of going to school, and worthy of realizing all the things we want in life. That's the first step of reclaiming our stories.”
Solis-Sison's experience as an artist and an organizer, along with her perspective as a former DACA recipient, played an integral role in shaping “From Here/From There.” She focused on presenting Cortes Romero's story in a way that emphasized his agency and humanity and provided viewers with a source of empowerment.
“I want people to step into this self-actualized confident power of believing in the power of community, believing in oneself, and knowing the universe will take care of us, but knowing we need to fight for that,” Solis-Sison said.
Through film screenings and discussions, the production crew view “From Here/From There” as a tool for change, motivating viewers to find their role in the immigrant rights movement and see the importance of advocating for immigration reform on national, state, and local levels.
"The only way that we're going to protect ourselves and move progress forward is through action,” Cortes Romero said. “It's not going to be done on a computer. It’s not going to be done by sharing a post. It's going to be done by showing up and becoming active.”
FROM HERE/FROM THERE (DE AQUÍ/DE ALLÁ) tells the inspiring story of Luis Cortes Romero, the first undocumented attorney to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The film follows Luis—an immigration attorney as well as a DACA recipient—as he journeys from a challenging youth to the highest court in the land as part of a powerful legal team fighting the administration’s attempt to rescind DACA.
The film is available for virtual and in-person screening events, with the goal of fostering important post-screening conversations about immigrant rights and inclusion. Visit the film's website to watch the trailer. For more information, please contact the film team at nicolesolissison@fromherefromthere.com