28. Anyone can be a Victim of Human Trafficking – An Interview with Erika Gonzalez from The Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (CAST)

On the 28th episode of Immigration Today! Angeline Chen welcomes Erika Gonzalez. Erika Gonzalez is a Training and Technical Assistance Managing Attorney at the Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking (CAST), in Los Angeles CA.  Erika is a national expert in legal remedies access for survivors of all forms of human trafficking. She is proud to be the daughter of Mexican and Salvadoran immigrants whose work focuses on approaching the legal representation of trafficking survivors from a trauma-informed, victim-centered, and race equity lens. 

Erika co-founded and continues to lead the Office for Victims of Crime’s first training and technical assistance program dedicated to legal remedies for trafficking survivors at CAST. Through this program, she trains attorneys and social service providers across the U.S. on issues of immigration, victims’ rights, criminal record relief and ethical considerations. Erika has devoted her career to working with survivors of human trafficking, sexual assault, and domestic violence. At Opening Doors, Inc. in Sacramento, CA, Erika assumed the low-bono immigration program focused on assisting victims of crime with immigration relief. As a staff attorney at CAST and Opening Doors, she represented crime victims in immigration, criminal victims’ rights, and criminal record relief matters.

Erika is the co-author of several advisories on T visas and other forms of relief. She is a member of the Freedom Network, a network of over 60 individual and member agencies representing trafficking survivors and is an active participant of their Steering and Racial Equity Committees. She graduated from the University of Pacific, McGeorge School of Law and the University of California, Berkeley. Erika is currently a fellow for the New Leaders Council, Class of 2021. She was raised in South Lake Tahoe.

CAST is one of the pioneers of the US anti-trafficking movement. CAST’s immeasurable contribution to survivors of human trafficking has been recognized by President Obama, who honored CAST with the Presidential Award for Extraordinary Efforts to Combat Trafficking in Persons in 2014. Erika has been doing anti-trafficking work since 2011 and has specifically been with CAST since 2014. She began as a Staff Attorney and eventually transitioned to the Technical Assistance role. 

You can learn about CAST by visiting their website online. Here is a link to the Training and Technical Assistance Program to learn about the free support to attorneys and social service providers assisting trafficking survivors. For our attorney and legal providers that listen, here is a link for trauma-informed lawyering resources. You can make a donation to CAST and follow them on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Linked in.

Immigration Today! is always releasing new content. Please s

DISCLAIMER – This podcast is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice or a solicitation to provide legal services. The information in this podcast is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute, a lawyer-client relationship. Listeners should not act upon this information without seeking professional legal counsel. The views and opinions expressed in the podcast represent those of the individual speaker only and are not necessarily the views of Clark Hill PLC.

Transcript

0:15

Hello, everyone. It's Angeline Chen. Welcome to Immigration Today, where I interview leaders, advocates, experts, and volunteers in immigration and immigrant rights on the issues, their experiences, and how you can make a difference. Today, we have Erika Gonzalez. Erica Gonzalez is a training and technical assistance managing attorney at the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking, also known as CAST, and this is in Los Angeles, California. Erica is a national expert in legal remedies, access for survivors of all forms of human trafficking. She co founded and continues to lead the Office for Victims of Crimes First Training and Technical Assistance Program, dedicated to legal remedies for trafficking survivors at CAST. Through this program, she trains attorneys and social service providers across the U. S. on issues of immigration, victims rights, criminal record relief. And ethical considerations at Opening Doors, Inc. in Sacramento, California. Erica assumed the low, low bono immigration program focused on assisting victims of crime with immigration relief. As a staff attorney, a cast and opening doors, she represented crime victims and immigration, criminal victims rights and criminal record relief matters. She is the co author of several advisories on TV says and other forms of relief. She graduated from the University of Pacific McGeorge School of Law and the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently a fellow for the New Leaders Council Class of 2021. And CAST is one of the pioneers of the U. S. anti trafficking movement. CAST's immeasurable contribution to survivors of human trafficking has been recognized by President Obama, who honored CAST with the Presidential Award for extraordinary efforts. To combat trafficking in persons in 2014, welcome to the podcast, Erica. Hi, thanks for having me. Thank you. Yeah, I know you're super busy. I've actually had, um, some experience with your advice on some of our TV. So, so I'm super appreciative of your help and, and just your time here today. Is it okay that we just kind of get right to some questions about you and your life and your work? Yeah, we can go ahead and jump in. Awesome. Thank you. So I'd like to start off with just going through, you know, your background and upbringing and how, you know, how did kind of how did you get here? But, you know, where, where did you get this interest in health and immigration from? Oh, uh, We said background. We're going to go all the way back. Um, uh, Hey, we can go as far back as you want. I actually kind of fell into immigration practice, uh, just by nature of an internship that I landed at opening doors when I was in law school. Uh, and they happen to specialize in working with a lot of different crime victims, but particularly, uh, trafficking survivors. So I started at Opening Doors in 2011 as an intern and then got hired on after law school and led that program for a while. Um, so it ended up just being coincidence. I actually said I never wanted to practice immigration law when I was in law school. And just because I wanted to practice Spanish a little bit more, I decided to. Take on this internship and then it kind of just stuck, but I really enjoyed the intersectionality of working in anti trafficking work. So I was really excited in 2014 when cast called me and said, Hey, do you want to come take a job with us? And. I moved to LA in 2014. Um, yeah. And so I've been doing essentially anti trafficking work since 2011. And when I do the math, it's a little scary. Yeah, no, it's amazing. It's hard work. And, you know, let's even, let's go further back. So what made you want to even go to law school then? Um, I mean, that's a big question. I kind of always wanted to go into law school. I sort of derailed in undergrad and Well, prior to undergrad, I actually decided to go to UC Berkeley because I wanted to study astrophysics, but it turns out me and math are not as good of friends as I thought. And I really got my butt kicked by a lot of high level math classes and actually almost failed out of college to be quite frank with all the math classes. Um, and I decided to look back even further to what I really wanted to do. And I'm. Mom would laugh and tell you that I wanted to be the first woman president of the US. Yes, I did. Definitely don't want to do that now but I had a plan when I was younger to go back to law school so I kind of reevaluated once. Physics kicked my butt and switched to poli sci and went, uh, political science and then went into law school. Um, but you know, I had to take a year hiatus because I did almost fail out of school. Uh, so I took me a two years to get into law school, but I did it. And yeah, it was good times after that. I mean, it's good times law school can be, I guess, and, uh, and then just. Landed in anti trafficking work. I. Thought I wanted to do more public defense work. And a lot of my internships in law school were related to that. Um, and generally related to helping marginalized populations with the skillset of navigating the legal system, but somehow the intersectionality of anti trafficking work has always kind of kept pulling me back in. I mean, so it sounds like, you know, going to law school was, um, obviously a second choice, but you, you did have this social justice background, right? And wanting to, to help the marginalized communities. And where did that interest come from in terms of, you know, helping people, you know, I, I get to be honest and say, I don't really know. I grew up in a smaller town. I'm, I'm from South Lake Tahoe and, uh, it was always It's small, right? But it was always kind of disproportionately, uh, divided in certain ways along race lines. I didn't clock it so much as a child. I really believed like as a kid that you could strap yourself out up by your bootstraps, but. Kind of had some wake up calls in college and law school that that's not necessarily the case for a lot of my peers and, uh, switched gears, essentially, I didn't always want to do social justice that came a lot later in life for me. I wasn't something I naturally gravitated to, but once I could see that other people didn't have similar experiences. As I did, uh, my sense of privilege really did kind of confront me in the face and slap me in the face, uh, and woke me up and then I was like, Hey, I actually know how to navigate these systems. I can help other people navigate them as well. Yeah, no, that's amazing. And I'm so I'm so glad you went through this path. I'm sure you would have been a great astrophysicist as well. But, um, I'm glad it would have been cool to be on a spaceship for sure. Really, really cool. Maybe it's never too late, not too late. I think me and calculus have parted ways in a way that it's a mutual breakup at this point. Yeah, yeah, totally. Um, so, so then now you've been a cast since 20. 14, right? That's great. You started out, um, in what position and kind of how did you get into the, the technical assistance? Uh, I started off as a staff attorney and the way that cast our legal department was now, uh, divided at that time we had. A couple of attorneys. There was only three of us on the legal team at that time. We're a lot bigger now. Uh, but two of us focused on working with foreign national populations and one who was working with U. S. citizen populations. I'll just caveat and say that CAS is now like all the attorneys work with all the populations, making us a little bit more jack of all trades. But I started off as a attorney and then the Office of Victims of Crime two years into my position at CAS. Offered this legal technical assistance grant and CAS kind of went for it and I was, it was the right place at the right time for me. But also, I think one of the reasons in my technical assistance, the trauma-informed component is so important is because I was experiencing a lot of compassion fatigue and burnout, uh, that made it difficult for me to continue working with clients in a way that. I knew they deserved, not that transitioning to technical assistance has alleviated all of that. But, um, I was recognizing things in myself that I felt it was time for me to transition a little bit out of client work. And like I said, right place, right time. The Office of Victims of Crime released their first technical assistance grants for both of them at the time were for legal technical assistance. And my boss asked me to apply. For the position and I did and I got it. So I've been here. Uh, we officially started that grant in 2016 so Yeah, no, I, I'm so glad you have that because there's so many attorneys that are taking these TV cases pro bono, low bono, and we need our cost or for costs. Yeah, and and, but, but it's still helping them and we need the help because. I mean, even if we are getting paid for it to, to, to do all that research. Start from scratch and try to figure out how to do a TV. So it's very costly for the client if they're actually paying. Um, and having you there is so helpful. So I'm, I'm really grateful. And you're so responsive. Um, so I, I appreciate it. I'm, I'm glad that's there. So that more attorneys can take pro bono cases, right? Um. And, and then I also understand that, you know, the burnout part, because I started out doing deportation defense and almost predominantly deportation defense. And after a while, you know, it really took a toll on my emotional and mental health and there's still people doing it. My friends are still doing it. I don't know how they do it. But they do, um, and then I also had to kind of expand and do less of that, at least do some other immigration work, you know, so I, I, I know exactly what you're talking about, um, for that. So tell us a little bit about cast. You said it was a small before, and I know that cause I was friends with, I'm still friends with Stephanie Richards, who's was there for a really long time. Um, and then now, like, what is cast now? Like how big is what, what are you guys doing? I could tell you the staff size. I think the interesting thing about being a technical assistance provider is we were growing pretty fast when we got this grant. I actually got kicked out of my physical space and have been working remote since 2017, I think 2018. So I actually haven't seen a lot of the staff so I would be misleading if I told you, but I think we're around 50. Uh, now when, when I started, we were all in one office, maybe closer to 20. So it is doubled in size, uh, as an organization, what we do, we, we exclusively serve human trafficking survivors. That's what we do. Um, uh, so we're not like a traditional legal aid organization, nor are we a traditional immigration organization. We work with survivors of all ages, all backgrounds, all types of trafficking and all types of nationality. Uh, In house for clients were based in the county of Los Angeles or of cases based in L. A. County. Uh, we provide legal services, social services. Uh, we have some shelter options as well. Um, and that's just our direct services, uh, that we also do as an organization policy work on a local level on a state level and on a federal level. We have my program that is a national training and technical assistance program right now live. The funding is limited to just the legal remedies, but we're hoping that maybe this expands in the future. And the other cool thing that cast has is the National Survivor Network which is run by survivors and it's there to support survivors, and a lot of different things whether it's policy advocacy, how to be a speaker. Or just general trainings for, and support for survivors who are leaders in this movement. So we do kind of a lot of things, but all of it is centered on all types of trafficking survivors. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, that is a lot of services that you provide for them. Can you tell us a little bit for the audience, you know, what, what is, how do you define someone who's been trafficked in the U S like what, who would qualify, uh, from your services? Well, it is a big question. I mean, I'm going to give you the lawyer answer to that question. And as long as they fit the federal definition of severe form of trafficking in persons, they qualify for, uh, they qualify for our services. So. I mean, I could, I could list, I could talk about the definition of severe form of trafficking in person, but that generally includes folks who are sex trafficked or labor trafficked. Right? So, um, I mean, I, I have a three and a half hour class on just the definition of trafficking, but, you know, we serve all types of, of trafficking survivors, labor trafficking, and, Can be so broad, it could be traditional forms of labor, untraditional forms of labor. So I've seen all kinds of cases and, you know, and I'm no, uh, you know, trafficking expert TV expert, but I know that even someone who is, who was. You know, who agreed to come and work in the US and is getting paid, but maybe not getting paid enough and under not great conditions that is considered someone who, um. Who is, you know, trafficked victim of labor trafficking, right? I mean, it's not necessarily potentially. And again, that's the lawyer answer. Right? Yeah. But I would say voluntary engagement. So we can start voluntarily engaging in something and then be forced and coerced to do it later. I think 1 of. I'm hearing you say this I went to my technical assistance brain, a lot of people say well oh they didn't get paid compensation actually and, you know, we're on an immigration podcast I'll say this to immigration lawyers, the policy manual itself even clarified that comes. Compensation itself is not determinative of trafficking, so people can get paid and still be traffic. The big thing is that if they're doing some type of work or some type of service that they were forced to do or coerced to do, they will fall under the legal definition of trafficking. And when they do, they qualify for a T, so it's really a T status application, but can you go into a little general explanation of what a T visa is? Yes, and I will caveat this because I think one of the interesting things about doing the TV so work is. Being a victim of trafficking is just the first qualification for a T visa, right? So I say maybe they would qualify for a T visa if they were identified as a victim of trafficking. The T visa is, uh, it's called T non immigrant status. It is a four year visa for people. Uh, who have been trafficked to be able to potentially stay in the U. S. for a long time. Uh, it is a path to citizenship, which is really nice. Um, and so long, there are four different eligibility requirements for it. Severe form of trafficking is just the first one. Then you have to show that you are physically present on account of trafficking, which generally means why are you still here since you escaped the trafficking, um, situation. The TV set is a law enforcement tool. So you also have to prove that you cooperated with law enforcement. What that means for immigration attorneys who don't know is very different than in the U visa, the U visa context. In this case, it just means that they reported the trafficking. And then they have to show that they would suffer extreme hardship if they were returned to their home country. And those are generally the four qualifications, as well as showing that they are admissible into the US, but there's lots of waivers available for T visa applicants to show that they are in fact. At least even if they are an admissible, they can wave into the U S. So yeah, I love waivers when they're available. Uh, but yeah, I think that's the, uh, it's interesting that you brought it up. So, uh, with the, them being a trafficking survivor, cause that's one of the things that the habits I'm trying to break up the field as a whole, because sometimes. Just being a trafficking survivor isn't necessarily enough to get the T visa, and that's how people, I want people to start recontextualizing their question, um, and rather than ask, is this a T visa, ask, is this person a victim of trafficking, and then starting the analysis from there to assess what options are available at that point. That's like, my big thing for 2023 getting us to, to, yeah, to think the right way, ask the right questions. Yeah, no, I'm not in your webinars are so good. There's so, so many templates. I mean, it takes many hours to put 1 together. I mean, that's from my own experience, but even if I was doing them a lot there, there's just everyone is so unique, you know, everyone is so unique. Very much so. Yeah. So, so then who is impacted by human trafficking or who tends to be more vulnerable to trafficking victimization. I mean, I'm going to caveat this and say that anybody can be a victim of trafficking, all people of all ages, race, genders, identities, education, backgrounds, we've seen highly educated people get trafficked. So generally, anybody can be trafficked. Not like maybe in the Dateline or 2020 version of it, you know, there's not necessarily people chasing after us at Walmart to traffic all of us. What generally makes someone more vulnerable to traffic, though, is people who are disproportionately vulnerable by society anyway. Like people who tend to be marginalized by structural racism, by, uh, homophobia, transphobia, people with disabilities, people with unstable immigration status, people who are poor, who have a history of abuse, all of those things tend to impact the vulnerabilities and make someone generally more vulnerable to trafficking as a whole. Yeah, that makes sense. Are you, are you seeing from the assistance that you're giving to attorneys that some of these victims are coming from certain countries? Are there more? Um, I mean, I feel that this happens everywhere. Trafficking is, is a huge money maker for, um, for a lot of people, so it's, it's a really Really serious issue. Are you seeing kind of more victims from certain countries at all? I will say this. I mean, 1 of the reasons I don't personally talk about human trafficking statistics generally is because there aren't any good ones and also. The people who come forward on this are people who tend to have a certain kind of privilege and a certain kind of access. So even if we saw more people from a certain location, I don't know that that's necessarily telling. I mean, we could look at the characteristics of a TV. So that USCIS, the U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services put out and kind of assess what countries applied for more TV says, which tended to be Mexico and the Philippines over the of the U. The history of the T visa. But again, like I think with, you know, as with any data, right. With the more that you just kind of look in one place, the more you see it there. And that doesn't necessarily negate it existing in other places. So, uh, I would say that while we see more of a certain type of population, depending on what location you're working in, right. I think it's not necessarily telling of. The type of person who's being trafficked, but generally we can say is the people who are most vulnerable to it are likely are just more vulnerable, I would say, to systemic problems are the ones who are more likely to get trafficked as a whole. So you could see how that evolves, you know, in the immigration context. Early on, there were a lot of Filipino nationals who were trafficked through the recruiting processes that were happening for teachers, for nurses, for hospitality work. Now we're seeing a little bit more on numbers wise on agricultural visas, but I don't think any of that is necessarily dispositive. It's just where it happens to be at a certain time. Sure. Changes all the time. Um, and how do people, how do victims find you guys? And I know you're in the legal assistance side, but in general, how do people find cast for help? I think cast is in a really unique position because cast phone number is the California's response emergency response number. for human trafficking, essentially the equivalent of the National Human Trafficking Hotline, but in the state of California. So on the posters that you see at airports or bus terminals about human trafficking, it is CAS emergency response hotline that's on there. So that's one way, but we do get, I, I'd have to pull up the hotline data again. That's not just, it's just not the department that I'm in. But a lot of it is, a lot of clients that we get are through referrals from other, other providers who don't necessarily specialize in trafficking as well, whether it be social service providers or legal providers, just depending on the need of the survivor. And, you know, from law enforcement too, as well, when they're working on cases. So, we get a lot of different types of referrals, but I think CAST, because of the nature of where our emergency response number is, we get a little bit more, uh, interesting, um, referrals. And we also do get a lot of referrals from other survivors who are telling their friends or family members about us as well. Survivors telling other survivors about us too. Yeah, no, that's great. I didn't know that it was the California hotline. So you're basically servicing all of California right now. Uh, we are answering the hotline for it, but the folks who get our direct services, um, do end up being those located in Los Angeles County. So, uh, we will help and make the appropriate referrals when possible. Okay. No, that's, that's really good to know. Um, cause I was like, how can you service all of California? But it's good. You just answer the call and then help where you can. And yeah. Yeah. I mean, we used to even respond to the whole Los Angeles metro area, but even that became too big of a, like we had when I started at CAST, we had a really huge wait list, a lot of props to the teams. That are doing direct service, especially our emergency response team that has able to reduce the size of that substantially, we still have a wait list at times, but you know, there's, cause there's always a need, right? So we did have to narrow our service area even more to just be responsive and provide qualitative services. Cause we do provide wraparound legal services to our clients and wraparound social services. So, you know, you can't quite do that if you're always. Very high in volume. Yeah. You have to kind of be trauma informed in the way that you're approaching that and make sure that your numbers are able to deal with the clients that you have. Mm-Hmm.. Mm-Hmm.. No, that's awesome. So, you know, when you were, uh, first a staff attorney and working with actual clients, did, did you have training and, you know, on the, um, being trauma-informed victim-centered, uh, way of kind of looking. You know, talking to your clients. I feel like, you know, some attorneys may want to do pro bono work and they want to work with these victims, but they really probably need some training right on how to talk to them. I think it's, it's a really interesting conversation to talk about what it means to be trauma informed and victim centered as a legal representative. And for me, this is something that I learned along the way of my practice, I've been incredibly lucky. Um, To work with social workers next to me and my entire legal career, who've been able to navigate those kinds of issues for me. Like when I was being more impatient with clients or when I was maybe asking things in a way that I shouldn't have been, it was really nice to get checked by my social worker counterparts and now lifelong friends who really helped navigate those issues. But I think what was, what's really interesting to me is that. Being a lawyer. There's always a tendency of like, I want to help. I just want to jump in and I can just do this without thinking about the repercussions that our work has on clients and what that means and engaging with clients. And I become especially passionate about it in the technical assistance position, because here I get to see from a bird's eye view certain legal strategies that have been taken by lawyers that were not in consideration of the client's wants or motivators for getting involved. Um, if I could put that in context in the T visa, there is a law enforcement cooperation requirement. Right. But that requirement, if you read it thoroughly, and now thank you to the broadness of the policy manual, uh, it does say that all that means is that you report the case. And it's pretty clear in the policy manual that you don't need an investigation, you don't need an interview. Most of the clients that I worked with and most of the survivors I've talked to about who have been involved in this process. don't want to get involved with law enforcement. They're being forced to get involved with law enforcement because of the requirement of the T visa. And because lawyers aren't necessarily understanding what trauma informed practice means, they're trying to win the T visa as opposed to saying, okay, my client doesn't want to engage with law enforcement. How can I address this law enforcement cooperation piece without. Putting my client in a position where they have to do the one thing they told me they didn't want to do. Right. So I've seen a lot of lawyers require their client to go to an interview or reach out to a million different law enforcement agencies just to get an interview or a report or an investigation. That's not trauma. Yeah. Woo. Yeah. And I mean, from a trauma informed perspective and not only a trauma informed perspective, but from a race equity perspective, You don't get marginalized populations to engage with law enforcement unless that is what they want to do. And so, for me that trauma informed and victim centered. approach really is about understanding why the client is engaging with you in the first place and what they want to be the outcome is. And yeah, I will say a lot of clients are like, I just want status. I just want a work permit. But behind that, it's like, well, okay. Uh, there's all these other components that come with it. Are those part of the journey that you want to take? And if the answer is no. You as a trauma responsive attorney have to say, okay, my client doesn't want to do it in this kind of way. What is my legal strategy to navigate that to reduce the harm my client experiences through the legal system? There've been so many survivors who say, you know, yeah, I got my visa at the end of the day, but I will never want to work with an attorney again. And I mean, I think you would agree with me though. No one wants to work with a lawyer, like you don't have to work with a lawyer, but like, To hear it so, uh, visceral and the reaction where clients are so scared to work with us, they're scared of us as attorneys. They're scared of what we're going to require. They're scared of what is going to happen early on in my career. I really wanted to be a safe person for my clients to work with. And honestly, it was my social worker colleagues who really helped navigate what that means and what that looks like for them. I had a lot of questions at the beginning of my career. Why am I? clients wanted to talk more to my social workers than to me. And that kind of was like, what started, you know, Pinging issues for me. I'm like, am I not doing something right and being self reflective? And I think what's really interesting in working in humanitarian and social justice is we see a lot of attorneys or social workers or other providers who put themselves First, when they're talking about these kinds of things like, look at me, I'm the person who's helping on this TV so pro bono project, or look at the way that I'm helping on YouTube. No, this was not a job. No, no, no. Rather than talk like, like cool. It's what we do. It's part of it's part of our work and what we do, but Their approaches don't necessarily stem from what clients are asking for like it's great that we're increasing support for survivors. It's great. We shouldn't stop doing that, but we're never the center and should never be the center of this conversation. It should always be our clients and what our clients wants are so the way that we legal, our legal strategies, the way that we promote our programs should always be cognizant of that. Yeah, no, that's that's really, really good. But you just said, I feel like a lot of us lawyers, we don't have that training, right? Unless we, we went to school doing social work or psychology, maybe, but we were just learning the law and law school and law school. It's not necessarily fun for a lot of cases. There's nothing about like how you talk to victims. Like there's, there's nothing like, I hope, you know, that's a long time ago. So maybe things have changed. It would be great. You know, for I haven't seen any webinars on how to kind of, um, train us lawyers right to be more trauma informed and victim centered. Um, but I think that'd be that'd be great to have for us. I think sometimes they just don't know, like, the attorneys just don't know and, you know, ideal. And sometimes they do. I don't know. Sometimes I don't care. But, um. I want to say that they care and they just don't know what they're doing. I think it's a don't, it's a don't know. I'll be honest with you, uh, being, cause you come from firm life and I come from public interest life, right? And the way our circles even operate in just that, right. I was working every day with a social worker. So trauma informed ended up becoming secondary to what I do because of who's next to me. Right? Well, you're right. We don't get bedside manner a lot of times in law school. And there are very few professors who. Teach on that. I'm going to give shout outs to, uh, Hannah Gary at USC Gould School of Law, who I know does it and Bridget Carr at University of Michigan and Julie Dahlstrom at Boston University, who I see in their clinics. They're definitely starting to do it a little bit more in the trafficking, specifically in the trafficking. I can't speak to other areas, but You know, in the private bar, it's not the same in the way that we're working. So you said there aren't trauma informed lawyer resources or trainings and actually there are quite a few. They're just on the NGO side rather than on the non government office side. So like we've trained with SINAR Institute and they've, we've talked about trauma informed practices with them and have webinars on that. And there are other resources. There's a great article. Um, on the pedagogy of trauma informed lawyering. It's really in the clinical setting, but honestly, like that, every time I read that, I read that at least once a year, I'm reminded of trauma informed practices again. So, but I think, I think your point is extremely well taken, right? It's just, but it, it isn't second nature. To like the way we practice. So looking at organizations like the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which they do a lot of great and I'm really proud of them, but I've felt struggle to find the practice points on trauma informed lawyer. That's what I'm saying. And I've given a lot of pushback, at least when we're on humanitarian tracks like this advice is not one that's not trauma informed, and it's not race equitable and I actually, I think. By nature of being trauma informed you will be understanding of race equity if you understand those client motivators they kind of go hand in hand, but some of the practices like they, they do get you the way, but it is sometimes an approach of the justify or the prop. What I wow I lost. And justify the needs. I completely lost that expression. No, no, no, I got it. Yeah, no, you got it. Yeah, no, I, I, I, I know exactly what you're talking about. And, uh, you know, I haven't researched the resources and I'm sure if I just did, I would find it, but I don't see that through a law at all. And we probably should put together some sort of just for that, you know, and I, and I think a lot of people would join. I mean, even, you know, I've. Then a lot of work with, with victims of, you know, of domestic violence and victims of crimes, but it's, it's always this struggle of like, oh man, I just, I don't even want to ask them about their trauma and experiences because it's just, they're reliving, they're reliving these experiences. Some of it was. In the past, some of it's recent, but I'm always like, I feel so bad. Like, I have to make sure. Am I asking the right way? Am I doing this? Right? I don't I don't want them to be worse off. But, you know, in terms of their mental health, I would try to help them get their visa, but we don't want them to be worse off, you know, emotionally. So, um. And, and, you know, over, I've been practicing almost 20 years now. I feel like I am always thinking about them, but it just, it's, it's, it's just difficult. Like, of course I still need the declaration. I need the facts, right? I need the dates. I need as much info as I can, but oh, I just. Yeah, the legal system itself is not trauma informed, right? And, uh, I believe it was one of my, uh, mentors, Kate Mogulescu. Um, and she's at the University of. Brooklyn, I want to say. Oh, don't quote me. I love Kate though. And I've heard her talk about us as lawyers being harm reductionists and being harm reductionists into the legal system, because the legal system is going to cause harm, period. You know, you are correct. We have to ask these sometimes questions about trauma. It's unavoidable. It's a requirement for a lot of legal benefits, especially the immigration ones. But. As lawyers, we get to reduce the harm that that has on the client. So to your point, strategic interviewing, like, you don't have to say, okay, tell me all the abuse that happened to you. It's pre planning. It's like pre planning your interviews on the intake that, you know, strategizing your questions. And, you know, for a lot of trafficking survivors, and I would say that this is true for a lot of crime victims. I do not limit this. And I don't think any of the principles that we apply. Are specific to trafficking survivors. I think they're for all crime victims. We just have to be cognizant of the fact that we are 1 person in their life who is a stranger who has to take all of this information, but we are probably not the only stranger who has to hear this if they have a family law case of restraining order proceeding a criminal law proceeding a civil law proceeding. They're going to have to retell their story. a bunch of times. But if we're just trying to get the win and not thinking about the whole process for our clients, we are really kind of just placing ourselves in a position of like being a savior for someone for one thing. Yeah, like everything we do is going to impact the client for the rest of their life. And we have to think that that is in the positive and also in the negative. But, you know, if we can reduce some of the harm the legal system has when they come to us for a legal form of relief, then. That is what being trauma informed is. And again, that's taking us out of the center of the equation. Like we're, we're not even supposed to be the leader of the process, right? The client is our boss. The client is the one who navigates it. And if you think about it, we're working specifically with trafficking survivors. Trafficking survivors have been put in the backseat of their lives through this victimization. So the power dynamic shift of like, hey, You tell me what you want to do and how you want to do it and I'll follow your lead is like complete role reversal of the power dynamics that they've had to deal with in their trafficking victimization. And sometimes we're so much thinking about the win like in that law enforcement cooperation example where it's like, okay, let's go, we got to go do this, we got to go help you instead of like, hey, let's slow down, let's figure out how you want to go through this process and you tell me what you want. And then it's my job as a lawyer. To figure out how to do it based on what you want. Yeah, no, that's really good advice, which you're saying, um, I love all of it. And then going back to that law enforcement requirement cooperation. I, I'm so glad I talked to either you or Stephanie about it, but it was like, I just emailed. The human trafficking task force in L. A. and just gave, like, the short, shortest paragraph on the facts and and the officer respondents, like, yes, send me the form. I'll sign it. Like, okay, my client didn't even have to talk to anyone, you know, so that's, and if people don't know that they're doing what you're saying, just like, I mean, what you're telling them, you have like the ideal experience, like the most ideal experience I can think about for my client. Most of the time, people are going to find that law enforcement isn't cooperative, but it's where, uh, like the attorneys, the one who are reporting. This is one way to be harm reductionist, right? Some attorneys will send their clients to report trafficking on their own. Like, one, trafficking is extremely difficult to explain, and they all have to deal with the marginalization that they're already experienced, rather than thinking, well, How can I take on this burden for my clients so they don't have to put themselves in that position, knowing how the systems are. So we'll report on the client's behalf right and say like our cast advice in this process is if law enforcement doesn't respond to your email. Okay, send them one more and say, Hey, just double check and keep it casual, you know, if they're still not responding to be like, okay, I'm just here's the form if you want to sign it. Yeah, if they don't respond. If they've never talked to you back, you still met the requirement. You don't have to change law enforcement to do it. It's not like that common I'll say it's not that common and other TVs and trainings to talk about it like this. Right. I think What's interesting is sometimes like there's this conversation of like what it means to be responsive to immigration and what that looks like. And I think in the last, uh, administration, there was a lot of scrutiny on T visas in particular, and a lot of attorneys, their, uh, instinct in response was like to. Dump a lot more evidence on USCIS and say, you can't deny me now because look at all this evidence I have. Yeah. 500 pages. Here you go. 500 pages should not be a flex on a T Visa, U Visa or ballot application for the record. Uh, but it's not a flex because it's not trauma informed, right? Immigration is always going to want everything that we have on our clients, but The law doesn't require that they have that. The law doesn't require a lot. And I think sometimes attorneys are so focused on either like they've had an experience where they had a good case that lost or they had a good case that got super scrutinized. So then their impulse is to throw more in without thinking about the burden that has on the client, whether that's like. Pushing for an interview or making them go through a psychological evaluation that they're not required to or forcing them to sit in counseling when that they don't have to go to counseling. You know, there's other types of social services that aren't counseling that could help a client be ready to engage with the process, but because we don't have. trainings on immigration relief in particular, in this kind of way, a lot of the trainings you see on humanitarian forms of relief are like, this is what the TV set is. It's this and this and this and this and this, and here you go. And so it's, it's hard to change those habits of like, not approaching it from the form of relief, but rather from who your client is and the impact it has on your client. Well, we got to change that, Erica. We got to do something. We do something that's trauma informed. We have to talk after well, I mean, this is why our TTA program or training and technical assistance program has switched the way that we're doing our trainings. I think you've seen some of the older ones that we have, which were a little bit more lecture heavy. We switched our formatting instead of rather doing just a TV. So webinar, we are really trying to approach. Okay. Representation of survivors from an anti trafficking lawyering perspective. What does it mean to be an anti trafficking lawyer? It means someone who's trauma responsive, someone who's victim centered, someone who understands race equity, and then takes their legal strategy approach based on the client's motivators. And that is what it means to be a true anti trafficking lawyer. Anti trafficking lawyering means you're not just an immigration attorney anymore. You're really looking at who your client is. And so now all of our newer trainings do require prerequisites. They do require you to do some of the base learning because you could read the regulations. Everybody who is a lawyer passed. Some sort of law school, they started some sort of test. We don't need to go over the regs with you again, but our role now is that as TTA providing and how our program has evolved since 2016 is really turning, having the conversation differently. Like, what is the strategy to do this? What is the strategy for a declaration in a more trauma informed way? How do you approach law enforcement in a more trauma informed response? How do you Minimize the racial, the structural racism issues that are happening in cooperation with law enforcement, acting as a victim rights attorney, as well as an immigration attorney in some parts. And for some organizations, for some firms, that really means who is assisting a trafficking survivor through this process, right? If you, immigration is federal law, so anybody with any licensed Can do it, you know, from any state, but where, where is the racial impact on that? Well, if the crime is occurring in a state where the client is located, they need a victim rights attorney who can is licensed to enforce their rights in that state. So when you go to law enforcement and law enforcement decides, oh, I do want an interview, then who is helping the client protect their rights? If you're not licensed in that state to do that, you can't protect those rights. So even if the case is unlikely to move forward, just that strategy alone, you could see that that's not really a race equitable approach. And legal representation, because marginalized people are being impacted by trafficking. Marginalized people are impacted by the criminal legal system. And by not doing that victim rights representation, you've kind of disregarded, you know, just structural racism right there in like one decision. Yeah, that's so interesting. I never thought of it that way. You're totally right. Oh, man. Thank you so much for all of that. So for our audience, if anybody wants to help, um, the cause help cast, um, how, what would you, how would you recommend people help the cause? It's a long question. It's a long question, right? There's a lot of efforts for anti trafficking but I will say that if you are interested in anti trafficking work, I think One, I'm going to give a shout out to our partner organization, Freedom Network USA, who holds a national conference every year that's multidisciplinary, and talks about the human rights approach to anti trafficking. There's a lot of different types of anti, well, I'll say there's two main schools of thought of anti trafficking, one of Being one that I don't necessarily agree on with the Erica hat, but I'll say Freedom Network does the human rights approach very similar to caste and that we understand the root causes of human trafficking are the same things that impact marginalized population. So we're thinking, okay, what do you do for the movement? Really look at issues that impact marginalized population, like wage and hour issues, you know, you know, homophobia, transphobia, what that looks like in the, for workplace discrimination, and looking at things like decriminalization of sex work and what that means and how that impacts, right? Understanding those root causes, I think it's really important to the larger anti traffic movement as a whole. If you're an immigration lawyer who wants to do T visas, I would just encourage you and any, I will say any human, humanitarian form of relief, consider to expand your training more than just on what the form of relief it is you want to practice, but really expanding to understand what trauma informed and client centered practices look like, because I think you'll find traditional lawyering just is not the nicest way to do this, the kindest way to help our clients through the process, even if we get the win. Um, But if you want to help cast, right? Yeah. And our cast, like cast, uh, you cast always, uh, with our, our website, we have castla. org. There's, uh, donations for sure. I think a lot of certain forms of legal relief that we assist with or other types of services are always supported by grant funding. For example, a long time post conviction relief wasn't supported by grants. So we had to kind of. Do it on funded for a long time. So anytime you can help an org that is doing wraparound legal services or wraparound social services to be able to do that work. I don't think people understand how limiting sometimes the funding can be. That's always a help. Um, and if you're wanting to do TV says you're always welcome. Our technical assistance is free because it's federally funded. Hopefully we get refunded so that we can continue to do that. If we don't get refunded. I think it'll be a rough. A rough time, but all of our materials will still exist. Um, I guess donating might help us to continue existing too, but I don't want to be selfish in that kind of way because our services are really important. Yeah, you're not being selfish at all. I mean, your services are all. Free. So it has to be funded somewhere. And sometimes your grants aren't gonna cover it all., and I'm sure your fundraisers, uh, yeah. So don't, you know, it's not being selfish at all.. And as you said, like, uh, we have a lot of templates. Uh, the only the templates we share, we know that they work. We go through them, we're working on updating them. We update our advisories as frequently as they ha um, as they come out. So if you are interested in this work, uh, even on our website, it'll connect you to our technical assistance website, which has a listserv. For attorneys to join to kind of get some of the updates from us as we're going. I mean, I'll tell you, Eric, I've never seen better resources on any topic ever in my life. I mean, it is so well compliment. No, I'm, I'm serious. It is so well organized and your website, like, technical assistance code here, working, working group. Uh, question calls, like, I think it's like once a week go here and, and, and here are the resources and they're all in folders and samples of all different kinds of different kinds of trafficking. Honestly, I'm super impressed. So, oh, you did remind me about our legal working group though. And that is for any attorney who is, uh, working on trafficking cases. We have a once a week call to troubleshoot cases, uh, case issues. But what I will say is we talked so much about trauma informed practices on the third Wednesday of the month. We bring in our social senior social worker who helps talk to talk. to us about some of these trauma informed issues. We've talked about how you deliver bad news to a client if a case goes south, how you navigate vicarious trauma, how you, um, You know, find services for clients that are actually helpful for them. Because I think as attorneys, we always think, oh, services must mean counseling. That's not always what it means. So the third Wednesday of the month, we've actually said no legal questions this, this week. Let's talk about some of the softer stuff about our work. That's great. I didn't even know that. That's great. Yeah. And any attorney can join that. Any attorney can do it. Okay. Attorney, a paralegal, legal assistant, a law student can join us. That's awesome. Erica, thank you so much for your for all your knowledge and your experience. Um, you're, you know, you, I love hearing you talk like you're so clear and and animated. It's like I love it. It's, um, I, I really do appreciate all the work that you are doing, and what Cass is doing. I've known about this organization for a very long time. So, I really, really appreciate your time. Thank you so much Erica for being here. Well, thank you for having me, and I can't wait to work with you more. Yeah, This podcast is intended for general education and informational purposes only, and should not be regarded as either legal advice or a legal opinion. You should not act upon or use this publication or any of its contents for any specific situation. Recipients are cautioned to obtain legal advice from their legal counsel with respect to any decision or course of action contemplated in a specific situation. Clark Hill PLC and its attorneys provide legal advice only after establishing an attorney client relationship through a written attorney client engagement agreement. This recording does not establish an attorney client relationship with any recipient.