Business is better than ever for Karla Navarrete. And she’s not happy about it at all.
She’s an immigration attorney who spends six days a week telling people that they have little chance of staying in Donald Trump’s America.
“It’s become a deportation mill, and my clients have been placed on speeding rockets,” Navarrete, the daughter of a Mexican immigrant, told me at her South Gate office around 8 on a recent Monday morning.
The 42-year-old mother of four had arrived at sunrise to prep for a day of virtual and in-person court hearings and free walk-in consultations. Tchotchkes gifted by grateful clients prettied the pink cabinets and pink walls. Amid statues and posters of the Virgen de Guadalupe was a rosary that a man had made of hardened bread during his months in an immigration detention facility.
On Navarrete’s desk were two Mac laptops and another computer, all logged into immigration courts across the Southland. The private practice she started in 2022 in a small suite now occupies an entire floor and a downstairs reception area, with satellite offices in Chino and downtown Los Angeles.
“Almost none of my clients have a winning case based on current law,” she continued. “’¿Si pasan reforma? [If they pass immigration reform?]’ is their most favorite question. But it’s not just Trump. It’s Stephen Miller, it’s Congress, and it’s becoming the courts.”
A judge called her name. She turned on a heart-shaped computer light, stroked back her long hair and unmuted herself.
“Good morning, your honor,” Navarrete said, her voice barely audible over the air conditioning blasting in her office. Her client, who was grabbed by immigration agents at a car wash last August, was seeking asylum because of the violence endemic in his region of Mexico. The judge was wondering where the man’s paperwork was.
“I’ll give you a few moments,” the judge said. “Make sure it’s complete, counsel. Otherwise, I’ll reject it.”
Navarrete, a San Diego-area native, became an attorney because she has lived through the capriciousness of American immigration law. Her Mexican mother was naturalized thanks to the 1986 amnesty, but her first husband struggled for years to attain legal status.
She flagged down an aide to see what was going on with the file. The court’s uploading system was spotty that morning, the aide said.
Immigration problems still rack Navarrete’s personal life. A member of her extended family faces deportation. Her current husband lost his green card when they moved to a new home to be closer to her job, threatening a long-planned trip to Mexico City.
“He’s going to have to pay a $700 fine and hope he can get a temporary one,” she said before smiling for what would be one of the only times that day. “Otherwise, he’s gonna have to stay here and babysit.”
After a few tense minutes, the judge said he had the client’s file and ordered the man to return in a few months. Navarrete’s other two virtual hearings of the morning ended similarly, with the client ordered back at a later date.
Next up: Zoom calls with clients. Navarrete reveled with one woman over her husband’s release from a detention facility.
She didn’t sugarcoat reality to the next client, whose husband was in immigration detention and had a standing deportation order. (I was able to listen in on sessions with current and prospective clients, provided I didn’t use their names to protect their privacy.)
“We just have to get him out so he can spend as much time together with you,” Navarrete said in Spanish.
“Well, is there a possibility that he could remain?” the woman replied.
“In this moment, no,” Navarrete said.
The woman stayed silent for a good five seconds before saying, “Gracias,” as her voice cracked.
Navarrete, whose biceps are adorned with a tattoo of her mother and one of the Virgen de Guadalupe as a Zapatista rebel, took off her fuchsia blazer to freshen up for a court hearing in Santa Ana. Such trips will soon become more common: She said court officials have told her that almost all hearings will soon be in person.
“They know it’s going to create chaos for immigrants and their lawyers,” Navarrete said, looking at her long acrylic nails, which she gets done every other week as a form of self-care. “But ‘immigration’ now is just a deportation template. It feels fundamentally unfair.”
Navarrete’s life changed last June when she got a phone call while hanging out with her preteen daughter.
Immigration agents had staged a mass raid of Ambiance Apparel in L.A.’s Fashion District. She headed over, finding that friends from UCLA, Loyola Law School and her time working for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights were converging there.
“We were like, ‘What are we going to do? Is this really happening? This, in L.A.?’” she said.
It was the start of a summer of raids that soon went nationwide and have never really ended.
At the time, most of Navarrete’s clients were women applying for a U visa, which offers legal status for crime victims who assist law enforcement in the prosecution of perpetrators. She quickly transitioned to helping people caught up in Trump’s deportation deluge, earning clients through word of mouth as well as through nonprofits such as the CLEAN Carwash Worker Center, which organizes carwasheros across Southern California.
Most of her clients now are middle-aged men, who often choose deportation over the harsh reality of staying in immigration detention indefinitely.
“It’s the younger ones who want to wait it out longer,” she said on the drive down to Santa Ana. An assistant took the wheel of Navarrete’s Range Rover so her boss could catch up on emails, calls and texts.
Family vacations have become limited to weekend getaways, because judges can schedule hearings at any time. Once, Navarrete represented a client virtually from a hotel room, a work jacket over her swimsuit while the rest of her family lounged at the beach.
Her client in Santa Ana had lived in the United States for decades and had a son in the military. Navarrete hoped the judge and the federal government would agree to a hearing on whether the father qualified for parole in place, which offers legal status and a pathway to permanent residency for some immigrants, including parents of active duty service members.
The strategy worked. The judge scheduled a hearing for early next year.
Outside the courthouse, Navarrete listed all the documents her client would need for a chance to stay, as his daughter furiously typed them into a cellphone.
“In another time, this case would’ve been wrapped up in six months,” Navarrete said on the drive back up to South Gate. “Now, everyone’s on the chopping block, and people are becoming desensitized to this if they’re not directly affected. Every [detained immigrant] becomes just another GoFundMe page to ignore.”
Thai food greeted Navarrete at the office — red curry, fried rice, drunken noodles. She ate alongside her employees, who were almost all decked out in black slacks and pink polo shirts bearing her firm’s name and its hummingbird logo.
Jocelyn Xoletl, who joined the office after Navarrete helped a family friend legalize their status, marveled at her boss’ energy.
“Every day I get up and say, ‘How am I so tired?’ and she gets up at 5 a.m. as a wife, a mom and an attorney,” said Xoletl, 23, who plans to attend law school. “She has a ‘do it’ mentality, which is so needed right now.”
“How we’re doing?” Navarrete suddenly called out. “Who we got? Start sending them up.”
A second shift of employees assisted with a parade of people who came in with high hopes and usually left clinging to them after their free consultations.
A Salvadoran woman who had lived in the U.S. since the 1980s held a summons for an immigration hearing while commenting that Navarette looked better than she had in a while.
“I’m doing Pilates now,” Navarrete replied in Spanish. “But Mama, I think they want to arrest you. I can accompany you, but I don’t think it’s to interview you.”
Navarrete kept calm even as the stories she heard grew sadder and sadder. She told a woman that her previous attorney had pursued a habeas petition to get her husband out of immigration detention, when all they needed to do was post bond. It was too late to remedy the error.
“I can’t keep throwing and throwing more money, because I don’t have the money, and I haven’t been able to help him,” the woman said in Spanish, weeping.
When a millennial Latina asked about applying for asylum based on her sexual orientation, Navarrete replied that the Trump administration would likely turn down her claim by pointing out that Mexico hosts Pride parades.
Even the good news came with bad. Navarrete posed for a photo with a client who held an oversized green card to mark his acquisition of the real thing. Then, she told him that his wife would have to spend a few years in Mexico to qualify for permanent residency through him.
“The two of you came happy to celebrate good news,” Navarrete told the quiet couple in Spanish, “and I came to embitter your day.”
Office assistants popped confetti streamers for a man recently released on bond from the Adelanto immigration detention facility, which Navarrete visits at least once a week, after she successfully petitioned a judge. He was still wearing an Adelanto identification bracelet and an ankle monitor to make sure he didn’t venture farther than 75 miles from his home.
Agents had nabbed the Mexico native while he was on a landscaping job. Of the dozen or so other men arrested that day, he told Navarrete, he was one of two who didn’t immediately sign deportation papers.
“So what did your wife make for you when you came back home?” she asked, trying to lighten the mood. His teenage sons stood to the side.
“Mole,” the man said in Spanish. “I missed it so much.”
Her final clients were two parents and their adult son, who were all in danger of being deported. The son had missed an immigration check-in, imperiling his chances of remaining in the U.S.
“I hate to be a realist to you, brother,” Navarrete told the young man, who wore a Dodgers hat and was awaiting the birth of his first child in weeks. “I wish I could give you a response that would allay your worries, but I can’t.”
Around 9 p.m., Navarrete let out a sigh. Another 14-hour day was about to end. She picked up her personal phone to check on her family and grabbed a bag for back-to-school supplies she had ordered from Amazon.
“It was hard today,” Navarrete said. “It was a lot of bad news. No one was a straight shot.”
I asked why she was so blunt with people about their chances.
“I can’t tell them it’s going to be OK. I don’t want to lie: It’s never been this bad,” she said. “I used to call my presentations ‘Know Your Rights’ workshops. Now, they’re just workshops, because there are no rights.”
Navarrete pulled out new V-neck law firm T-shirts for her employees, made by a grateful client.
“As crazy and as chaotic as it can get, every once in awhile, you get a win,” she continued. “And that’s what makes it all worthwhile. It’s gotten harder but more gratifying, because I always wanted to go against ICE, the arch-nemesis of my life.”
Everyone lingered in the parking lot for a few minutes to discuss the week to come. Then, Navarrete remembered her own immigration problem. She and her husband needed to be in Westwood at 7 the next morning to see if he could get a temporary green card.
“What do you think? Will they let my husband get his stamp?” she asked.
He did get it, she told me later. Most of her clients won’t be so lucky.
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