LOS ANGELES — Fighting for immigration rights is more than a job for immigration attorney Lizbeth Mateo, who has been living undocumented in Los Angeles for 22 years. 

"I’ve had family members who have been put in removal proceedings, be detained [and] removed from this country," said Mateo. "I remember the frustration of not being able to help them."

Mateo’s family brought her to the U.S. from Mexico 22 years ago to give her a chance at a better life. Since then, she has had many challenges. Although she completed law school and passed the bar exam, Mateo was not able to obtain work as an immigration attorney because of her undocumented status.

Mateo also applied and was denied DACA protections prior to the program being rescinded by the Trump administration. Despite her hurdles, she opened her own law firm in 2018. Now she works on her client’s immigration cases to hopefully, one day, change her own.

As the Biden administration brings a more open tone for immigration reform, she is seeing more clients who are hoping to gain a pathway to citizenship.

"I think they were afraid during the Trump administration," Mateo said. "They saw the urgency, now that there’s a proposal for immigration reform."

Recently the Biden administration proposed to have an immigration bill that would include an eight-year path to citizenship, expedite DACA, and more. While the proposal is encouraging to hear for Mateo, she remains cautiously optimistic. She explained that promises for immigration reform have been made before by prior presidential administrations that did not pan out as expected.

"As an immigrant and also as an advocate, as an immigration attorney, it’s been really heartbreaking, really stressful," she said. "I am hopeful that better days are coming."

That is why Mateo remains hopeful but confident that her work will also help break ground on changing her own immigration status one day.