THE STORY

Luis isn’t your typical member of the Supreme Court Bar. In opening scenes, we see him having another tattoo added to his collection of body art. Later, while skateboarding through his hometown of Redwood City, CA. Luis explains that he was an all-American kid with the dream of selling candy to finance a middle school trip to Europe – until his mother broke the news that he couldn’t go. He didn’t have papers. Luis was born in Mexico.

Luis’s document-dependent world splintered even further when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported his devoted father back to Mexico. Frustrated and angered, the formerly motivated student turns his back on his Mexican roots. He dyes and spikes his hair to go punk. His once close-knit family loses its center.  

Despite these tragic setbacks, Luis manages to make his way to college where Chicano studies help him find his way back to himself, his culture, and improbably to University of Idaho law school.

When working late one Friday in his Seattle law office, Luis is asked to take on the case of a racially profiled DACA recipient, Daniel Ramirez, being arrested and threatened with deportation despite the safety afforded him by the Obama era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The Trump administration had just entered office.

Recognizing the arrest could signal that DACA’s shield has been breached, Luis posts an urgent message to his legal network and quickly connects with renowned civil rights lawyer Mark Rosenbaum. Luis was right. DACA is under attack. Together, he and Rosenbaum assemble a powerhouse pro bono legal team to defend Daniel and sue the U.S Government. 

A few months later the Trump administration rescinds DACA, threatening over 700,000 DACA recipients with exile, including Luis. Already forged to defend Daniel, the legal team is able to move quickly and launch a wider challenge to save the program. 

The team wins at the federal trial court. They win at the appeals court. But Trump’s Department of Justice won’t be stopped; it takes its case to the Supreme Court where the DACA cause seems lost given the high court’s increasingly conservative turn. But believing in the righteousness and urgency of their cause, the DACA legal team is undeterred and attracts an unlikely ally, renowned conservative lawyer, Ted Olson to join their crusade.

Under a crisp November sky, as thousands of DACA supporters protest outside of the Supreme Court, Luis declares, “The activism leads, and the law follows!” He is about to make history as the first undocumented immigrant to appear before the nation’s highest court. After the oral argument, the pundits uniformly predict DACA is likely headed for defeat.

Months pass, Luis and other DACA-supporting lawyers impatiently check the SCOTUS docket Monday after frustrating Monday. Meanwhile after visiting a client in a detention center, Luis contracts Covid and is hospitalized. 

Finally, early on a June morning, with the camera rolling on Luis still in his pajamas with bedhead, we watch as he gets the stunning news. Against the odds, they’ve won! Joy breaks out among the team and across DACA-land.

Despite the victory at the Supreme Court chronicled in From Here/From There (De Aquí/De Allá), a federal court in Texas declared DACA illegal across the country, leaving the fate of hundreds of thousands of young people in limbo in the midst of a raging migrant crisis and a volatile presidential election year, making this moving film more urgent than ever.