EP · 011
THE SCIENTIST WHO BET HIS CAREER ON BUGS. 14 YEARS LATER, HE WAS RIGHT.
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Once I started saying yes, I feel like I'm reaching a new level.
Gladdys Uribe
Gladdys Uribe describes herself as the proud daughter of Mexican immigrants, some of whom were undocumented. A protector. A defender. An advocate. She decided at 16 that she would become a civil rights attorney, and she has never once changed her mind. Now she's an immigration attorney navigating one of the most consequential moments in the history of her field.
Key Takeaways
- →Decided at 16 to become an immigration attorney: Gladdys traces her career to a specific moment at age 16, watching discrimination against undocumented family members including her father, who was undocumented when she was born and got residency through her mother around age two. She describes her entire education—scholarship school, Occidental, UCLA Law—as a deliberate accumulation of tools toward that pre-set goal.
- →Saying yes to TV instead of no out of fear: Gladdys had been declining Telemundo commentary opportunities for years because she feared using the wrong Spanish word or not being polished enough on camera. About a year and a half before the interview, she adopted a rule: any time she identified fear as the reason she was saying no, she forced herself to say yes instead. Telemundo now has her on as a rotating legal commentator every other week.
- →Immigration detention centers are deliberately remote and opaque: Gladdys explains that detention facilities are placed in rural areas specifically to isolate people from family and legal counsel, and that ICE can transfer someone from California to Texas or Florida, making it nearly impossible to find an attorney. She cites cases where families couldn't locate detained relatives for weeks even using the ICE inmate locator, and attorneys she knows advise clients to hide AirTags in their shoes.
- →The crack in immigrants' belief that America has rule of law: Gladdys describes a painful shift: her clients, who historically treated the United States as a place where rule of law protected everyone, are now asking her why the president is breaking laws with no consequences. She finds it especially painful that clients studying for the citizenship test must recite 'no one is above the law, not even the president' as a civics answer.
- →Private detention companies profit directly from the cruelty: Gladdys identifies GEO Group as one of the primary private contractors running immigration detention centers and a large Trump campaign donor. She says the government pays an exorbitant daily rate per detainee, and facilities generate additional revenue by charging immigrants for phone calls—creating a financial incentive to maximize detention rather than resolve cases.
In This Episode
- How growing up with undocumented family members shaped a sense of justice before she had words for it
- Why she describes herself without her title and what that decision reveals
- What it means to practice immigration law right now as policy changes hit families overnight
- What it feels like to be doing exactly the work you decided to do when you were 16
- What her path from college to courtroom actually looked like
Full Essay
We turned this conversation into a long-form essay. More context, more depth, and the moments that didn't make the edit.
Read on Substack →What We Discuss
Growing up as the daughter of Mexican immigrants and what that planted in her
The decision at 16 to become a civil rights attorney and why it never wavered
How she got from Occidental to immigration law
What practicing immigration law looks like right now in real time
What it means to have done exactly what you said you would do
Q&A
Questions answered in this episode
What should someone do if a family member is detained by ICE?
Gladdys says the two most critical pieces of information are a memorized phone number for a family member—because detainees lose their phones—and the alien registration number (A-number) that ICE assigns at detention. Without the A-number, she says, it is nearly impossible to locate someone in the system, and immigration attorneys she knows now advise clients to memorize it or carry it written down.
How is the current immigration enforcement different from the Obama administration?
Under Obama, enforcement had explicit priorities—people with serious crimes were targeted while those with no criminal history and US citizen children could have cases administratively closed by agreement with DHS attorneys. Under the current Trump administration, a memo eliminated enforcement priorities entirely, meaning everyone regardless of circumstances is a target, which Gladdys calls a waste of resources driven by ideology rather than public safety logic.
Who profits from immigration detention centers?
Gladdys identifies GEO Group as one of the largest private operators of ICE detention facilities, which she says contributed heavily to Trump's campaign. The government pays a high per-day per-bed rate, and companies generate additional revenue by charging detained immigrants for phone calls. She draws a direct line between these financial arrangements and the lack of incentive to improve conditions.
What can non-immigrant allies actually do to help immigrant communities right now?
Gladdys points to neighborhood-level action as the most effective: driving children to school so parents don't have to go out, dropping off groceries, forming volunteer patrols to monitor ICE activity near places like Home Depot and alerting neighbors with a whistle signal. She contrasts this with protest participation, noting that many of her actual clients cannot afford to miss work or skip sending kids to school where they receive their main daily meal.
How does Gladdys Uribe handle the emotional weight of immigration law?
She describes her early years appearing before immigration judges with anxiety so severe she would vomit in the courthouse bathroom before hearings, then put on what she calls 'game face.' Her ongoing framework is celebrating every win no matter how small, going to therapy—which she first started in law school—and holding onto the principle of 'living to fight for another day' rather than being overwhelmed by the cases she loses.
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