Rooted in Resilience: Eloy Gardea's Path as a First-Generation Immigration Attorney
When I talk about why I became an immigration attorney, I always go back to my own story.
I'm the son of Mexican migrants, and for a long time I carried this persistent feeling of
not fully belonging in the United States. That experience shaped me. It pushed me toward
the law because I wanted to advocate for myself, for my family, and for anyone else who
has felt that same uncertainty about their place here.
Growing up in a collectivist household meant one thing above all else: you look out for
your people. That sense of responsibility runs deep in me. It allowed me to connect with
my clients in a very real way—to recognize their fears, their struggles, and the weight
they carry. But carrying that much with them eventually took a toll. As a first-generation
attorney, my biggest challenge was learning how to separate my personal life from my work.
The cases weren't abstract; they mirrored the realities my own family lived through. That
made “leaving work at work” nearly impossible.
Over the years, I've had to re-evaluate how I show up in this profession. Two shifts have
helped me stay grounded:
- Shifting my approach to advocacy. Instead of trying to shoulder every
burden myself, I focus on empowering my clients with knowledge—helping them understand
the systems they're navigating and giving them the tools to advocate for themselves.
Advocacy isn't just fighting for people; it's equipping them to stand on their own.
- Reconnecting instead of disconnecting. Most advice you hear is about
stepping away from work to recharge. For me, what actually restored me wasn't
disconnecting—it was reconnecting with the people who inspired me to do this work in
the first place. Rebuilding those relationships and grounding myself in my purpose
helped me move forward without feeling constantly depleted.
I'm grateful to every attorney who's already doing this work, and to those considering
joining this field. I hope my reflections give you something meaningful as you navigate
your own path in this profession.
Between Two Worlds: Experiencing Burnout at the Crossroads of Culture and the Immigration System as a First-Generation Attorney
A personal reflection on how Eloy overcame the unique strain faced by first-generation
immigration attorneys, exploring how cultural identity, family expectations, and client
trauma contribute to burnout—and how reconnecting with purpose can restore balance while
offering a path forward for others navigating similar challenges.
The alert on my computer indicated that my client was supposed to have arrived at my office
25 minutes earlier. I had several client meetings that day, so I was concerned that I might
have to reschedule, despite the looming deadlines in her case. My client did eventually
arrive, and immediately apologized for being late and for having to bring her children
along. She explained that she and her children were not able to sleep much the night before
and with tears welling up in her eyes, disclosed that she and her four children lived in a
small trailer, with no heat, and had struggled the night before to fight off the cold. It
was 25 degrees that morning and had been so cold the previous days that I had to buy a small
space heater for my office. I offered it to her and gave her several blankets that been
donated to our non-profit. In addition, I connected her to some emergency resources to
ensure she and her family didn't have another night like the one they had just experienced.
I reacted to the situation like any attorney in my position would—identified a problem and
provided a solution. The empathy I felt toward my client is not unique to me. However, the
intensity with which this interaction hit me was different. Despite the many professional
trainings and conversations I had attended on burnout as an asylum attorney, the emotional
complexity of these encounters was never discussed. Such conversations emphasized empathy as
emotional labor that could be exhausting and that the antidote was learning how to create
boundaries and practice self-care. After eight years of directly representing people seeking
asylum, I came to see that I could not separate my professional obligations from the personal
obligations I felt toward others no matter how many attempts at self-care I made or how many
boundaries I attempted to create between myself and my clients. My professional identity as
an advocate was wholly shaped by my cultural upbringing and collectivist perspective, where
one internalizes others' suffering and puts oneself in the position to help. That morning, I
not only felt the cold my client and her children had experienced, but I also felt the shame
and embarrassment that she expressed in even asking for help. I absorbed her pain on a gut
level—no amount of setting boundaries could shield me from this feeling.
I chose to be a non-profit immigration attorney because of my long desire for inclusion for
myself, my family, and the people I considered my community. Coming from an immigrant family,
I was always taught the importance of the collectivist approach, whereby one sacrifices one's
own comfort to foster an inclusive and welcoming environment for all. As I began my work in
direct representation, I encountered a landscape marked by ongoing humanitarian crises and
anti-immigrant sentiment. I thought my collectivist approach to addressing social injustice
would push me through these difficult times and shield me from secondary trauma. In the
beginning, it did. I was praised by my clients for creating a space that allowed them to be
vulnerable, and empower them, because someone could finally understand the many facets of
their experience, including the ones that went beyond their legal troubles. Treating clients
holistically was a strength that my culture and upbringing afforded me. However, over time,
this approach resulted in my clients not only drawing upon my legal support but also viewing
me as a source of emotional support. This resulted in multi-hour-long conversations about
anything from family relationships, to being swindled out of a paycheck, to car troubles, or
to not having enough money to pay the rent.
As the child of Mexican immigrants who came to the U.S. in the late 1980s and who lived below
the poverty line, encounters like the one with my client took me back to moments in my own
life when my family and I had no choice but to be vulnerable as we attempted to get others
with privilege to see our humanity. From embarrassing trips in line at the food bank and
clothing drives, I learned from a young age the shame and vulnerability it took to ask
another for help. Encounters like the one with my client also remind me of how significant
it is to be entrusted by another with the responsibility to look out for them. This sense of
responsibility, something that goes beyond compassion and completing the case, has been
shaped by my cultural upbringing, and is the foundation for my approach to advocacy. It has
also inadvertently contributed to my burnout.
After years as a removal defense attorney, I found myself both exhausted and alienated from
the mainstream conversation on burnout among asylum practitioners. As I build my own
consciousness of my experience, I now grapple with the following dilemma: how to reconcile
the demands of a professional culture that emphasizes self-care and boundaries with
collectivist cultures that are rooted in human interdependence. For me, my culture has taught
me to go beyond the boundaries that divide us, and to forge connections to human beings who
are in a vulnerable position, and seek to have their humanity recognized. This is clearly a
double-edged sword, and yet at the same time, it is the thing that I know has made an
incredibly positive impact on so many of my clients. This is a sentiment that many of my
colleagues who come from an immigrant background share.
On the one hand first generation attorneys are well equipped to treat clients as whole
persons because many of us have experienced certain dimensions of our clients' pain. On the
other hand, we struggle with the unique form burnout takes in this profession for us—being
constantly reminded of our own families' struggles through the eyes of our clients.
For these reasons, I suggest we pay closer attention to the way burnout impacts first
generation asylum practitioners or those that come from immigrant backgrounds. We can take
action to address burnout for this group of people. It begins by recognizing that
practitioners have their own personal histories. For many first-generation practitioners,
their identities are tethered to a variety of communities who have experienced multiple forms
of loss and pain, but who also empower each other through harnessing their collective power.
In sum, it is important to recognize that the pasts, memories, and traumas of asylum
practitioners do not magically disappear once they step into the office. In a professional
culture that increasingly emphasizes the client as deserving of holistic treatment, what would
it mean to think about the practitioner in a holistic way as well?
The moment is ripe to develop qualitative and ethnographic evidence-based research on
first-generation asylum attorney experiences of burnout, in addition to quantitative
survey-based and focus-group studies. These actions can raise the asylum practitioner
community's consciousness of the problem. Such research could be used to create more
awareness-raising spaces in the workplace where first generation attorneys could share their
experiences. Most importantly, consciousness and awareness must be channeled into action. This
can take the form of collective advocacy, such as more culturally competent and robust mental
health support in the non-profit asylum space. Lastly, as we advocate for our clients and
deal with our own burnout, we cannot lose sight of the fact that our clients' suffering and
for some of us, our own communities' hardships, are rooted in systemic inequalities that
require policy and legal reform, in our immigration and detention systems.
It is important to recognize that practitioners also need to feel safe and supported while
doing their work. Part of creating a supportive work environment is allowing a space where
diverse experiences can be shared. Doing so would allow practitioners to achieve the common
goal of providing the most vulnerable with the chance at a better life that they so deserve.
This article was originally published by the American Bar Association's “Generating Justice”
blog. Source: Eloy Gardea, “Between Two Worlds: Experiencing Burnout at the Crossroads of
Culture and Identity,” American Bar Association (2022). Available at:
americanbar.org