In the Northern Sacramento Valley, immigration attorneys are hard to find
By Natalie Hanson | Posted April 9, 2025
photo by Karen Laslo
Sergio Garcia
Immigrant advocacy organizations are racing to block the Trump Administration’s attempts to enforce the campaign promise of “mass deportations” that could potentially affect millions of people.
But in the North State, many people live far away from immigration attorneys who could help them with their existing cases or new threats from ICE, said Chico attorney Sergio Garcia, who practices personal injury law, and in 2014, became the nation’s first undocumented person to obtain a law license. Garcia is now an American citizen.
Garcia regularly directs immigrants needing legal help to attorneys practicing in Sacramento.read more
Sergio Garcia says family-based migration is crucial
By Leslie Layton | Posted June 19, 2019
photo by Karen Laslo
Salvador Covarrubias (left) brought his young son Sergio Garcia to Chico, knowing that the boy would qualify for residency.
It took Sergio C. Garcia longer to become a U.S. citizen than it took for his native country, Mexico, to win independence from Spain.
It took longer than it took for him to win the right to practice law, becoming the nation’s first, so-called undocumented attorney.
Garcia will be sworn in as a U.S. citizen in a ceremony today in Sacramento – the end of a journey that began in 1994 when he was brought to the country as a teen who knew even then that if he was going to live in the United States, he wanted to belong as a participating citizen.
That it took Garcia 25 years to arrive at the belonging he longed for shows how cumbersome the immigration machine can be for people like him who qualify. His story also shows how family ties – one of several ways to qualify for a green card – can be weakened or broken by distance.read more
