CAMEO
by Sara Rae Lancaster
Compassionate Law For Luca Fagundes, such a moment occurred when he was nine years old and his parents immigrated to the United States from Brazil. Both of his parents had recently finished medical school and decided to do their residencies in the United States. “The plan, I was told, was to complete their residencies, and then go back to Brazil, where my dad was going to take over his father’s cancer-treatment center,” Fagundes said. Instead, his parents decided to stay in the United States, securing green cards and eventually becoming U.S. citizens. Fagundes was already a citizen, having been born in the United States while his parents were visiting the country previously on work visas. They returned to Brazil when he was nine months old. “That was an experience I went through, but I didn’t ever think [that] because of it, I wanted to be a lawyer, let alone become an immigration attorney,” he said. But that’s exactly where life led Fagundes, who, now in his 10th year of practicing immigration law, is able to look back and connect the dots that helped to shape his career. Immigration law is perhaps one of the most complicated areas of law — and at times very controversial. In 2017, for example, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions dubbed those in the profession “dirty immigration lawyers.” This legal specialty requires attorneys to have an understanding of the key issues involved, the role the federal
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government plays in immigration law and policies, and the wide range of situations that fall under the scope of immigration law, from obtaining a green card to deportation. So when a former co-worker approached Fagundes with an immigration-law question during his first year as a general-practice attorney in Sturgeon Bay, he quickly realized he knew nothing about the field. “I took one course in immigration law while I was at UW-Madison, and it was a cursory class,” Fagundes said. “A survey of immigration law and international policy.” However, that naïveté may be what launched his career. What Fagundes lacked in knowledge and experience, he had in time, as he was beginning his practice. He reached out to a law school colleague who was practicing immigration law in Chicago. That colleague gave Fagundes a list of resources and told him to “look into it.” And he did. Not only did Fagundes see a need for immigration attorneys in Door County and the surrounding area, but he discovered that he had a toolbox of skills and experiences that appeared tailored to this career path. One childhood moment in particular stood out to him. “When I came to the U.S., my mother, who taught English in Brazil, immediately put my younger sister and me in summer school,” Fagundes said. He shook his head at the memory and called his mom’s DIY languageimmersion plan for his nine-year-old self and his younger sister “traumatizing.” At the time, Fagundes knew 10 words in English, including “chocolate milk.” “Because, my mom told us, ‘When you get to lunch, they are going to ask you if you want regular milk or chocolate
milk,’” he said. “So I had memorized ‘chocolate milk.’ But other than that, I knew nothing.” The memory of the anxiety and fear he felt from being in a classroom with 30 English-speaking peers, unable to understand anything that was going on or being said, still generates a visceral reaction 30-plus years later. “I can still picture it,” Fagundes said. “I can’t understand anything. Kids are laughing at me. And although it’s not something that applies to all my clients, I can get a bit nasty about it when someone is upset that my client doesn’t speak English because being in those shoes is not a fun place to be.” Fagundes practices two areas of immigration law: family-related immigration and deportation defense. The first deals with situations in which a U.S. citizen marries someone who is not a citizen and the spouse needs a green card. The second, deportation defense, generally involves someone who is entering deportation proceedings. Sometimes Fagundes meets a client who is facing both criminal and deportation issues simultaneously. That was the case with Patricia and Luis Perez. They engaged Fagundes for what felt like a “Hail Mary” effort, Patricia Perez said. “We had gone to five lawyers before him, trying to share our story, and everyone told us either not to try or that it wasn’t worth trying,” she said. “Except for Luca.” Their dire predicament began as a small paperwork issue, but it grew and resulted in years of fear, stress and challenges. Luis Perez first came to the United States from Honduras when he was 16. He crossed the border without the proper documentation and was
Photo: Brett Kosmider
There are early experiences we have that, in the moment, appear to be isolated incidents or even nothing more than a meaningless part of the everyday minutiae. Unbeknownst to us, however, these tiny blips on the timeline can actually become cornerstones for some other aspect of our life down the road.
