Abstract

Excerpted From: Luz E. Herrera, Chicana Professionalism: Embracing Greñas, Glitter & Boots, 94 Fordham Law Review 1377 (March, 2026) (95 Footnotes) (Full Document).

In June of 2025, as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids swept through Los Angeles County,1 I felt the return of a familiar sense of alarm. This concern is not just for clients, family, friends, and neighbors, but for what it means to be a lawyer trained to uphold the rule of law while witnessing the law be used to justify violence in and against my community. I was back in my hometown of Whittier, California for the summer where my home security system captured the fear and violence that too often ensued. Neighbors posted videos of arrests by masked men in unmarked cars. Stories of these same individuals driving through streets and picking up street vendors, landscapers, day laborers, and anyone who stood in their way became commonplace. The ICE raids that occurred within the communities in which I lived and worked forced me to reckon with the ambivalence that I carried into the legal profession but suppressed after taking the oaths required to become a lawyer.

Looking back, I decided to join the legal profession despite my awareness of the ways in which our country's foundational principles were betrayed by the practice of enslavement and criminalization of Black bodies,3 how law was used to destroy native families and communities,4 and how treaties were used to perpetuate fraud and violence to transform Mexican lands into U.S. territory. I also knew the country's history of xenophobia and how the U.S. government quickly codified racist policies excluding Chinese people and interned Japanese Americans. I studied the repatriation of Mexicans in the 1930s and the criminalization of youth wearing zoot suits in the 1940s. I entered law school aware of the ways in which gender defined the expectations of what I could achieve or determined what attire would deem me professional. Yet I convinced myself that joining the legal profession was the best path for me to equip myself with the tools needed to contribute to my community and support my family. After all, I also understood that law could be used to prevent or reverse harms.

In the days that followed the initial ICE agent raids at local shopping centers, streets were emptier, church pews went unfilled, and the neighborhood buzz quieted. There was a clear feeling of mourning in the mundane interactions of my neighbors, the store clerks, and the local street vendors. I felt the discomfort in my body--a visceral recognition of how quickly safety can feel conditional and how the line between ""professional" and "suspect" can immediately blur.

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Noem v. Vazquez Perdomo,12 which permitted immigration agents to assault and kidnap working-class Latinos that speak Spanish based on the reasonable suspicion that they could be undocumented immigrants, confirmed what I already knew. As a Spanish-speaking Chicana who grew up working class, I recognize that no amount of education, eloquence, or citizenship can guarantee protection from suspicion. Professional credentials do not always shield us from the presumption of illegality. The institutions in which we operate were not designed with our life experiences in mind, so we are viewed as intruders. Our version of reality is not always welcomed by other members of the legal profession who must abide by professional norms that require lawyers to police each other. I know this now, and I knew it twenty-five years ago when I became a member of the legal profession.

The current political moment, where immigrant identity is scapegoated and academic freedom is threatened, requires an affirmation of personal identity, a recognition of personal struggle, and a celebration of resilience. This Essay embraces the ideas that professional identity development is temporal and that the current conceptualization of professionalism requires embarking on a reflection journey that addresses the dissonance between personal conscience and professional duty.

Part I briefly revisits the work of Professor Margaret E. Montoya, one of the first Chicana law professors that describes the formation of her professional identity as a law student. It explores the status of Latinas in the legal profession by citing the work of Professor Melinda S. Molina, Jill Lynch Cruz, and others who study Latina lawyers. Part II reflects on formative experiences that have contributed to my professional identity and how I have succumbed to the traditional norms of the legal profession. It also acknowledges the rage, silence, and judgment that we sometimes unleash in our attempts to mentor. Finally, in Part III, I rationalize the use of masks to highlight how we may reinterpret professionalism not as a limitation but as a transformation of our trenza--our braided identities--as a trajectory tool to advance our families and communities. It discusses how the American Bar Association's (ABA) professionalism standards can be employed not only for law students, but also to help wounded seasoned practitioners like me heal.

Unmasking those who bring division and fear into our lives requires that we engage in our own unmasking. As lawyers, we must ultimately work toward a version of professionalism capacious enough to hold our voices, our stories, our successes, and our dissents.

[. . .]

This Essay is not a call to reject professionalism. Instead, it is a call to unmask our own complicity in the silence that professionalism sometimes requires. It acknowledges our losses but also exposes what we can gain when choosing to remain silent. At a time when we demand ICE agents to reveal themselves, we must also unmask. Chicana/Latina lawyers today have the knowledge, skills, and bar licenses to demonstrate courage, cultural fluency, and dissent. Those of us who confront fear on the journey can be empowered by the belief that the law must reflect the communities the legal profession has too often harmed. It is not enough to wear a mask at the legal profession table; the needs of our communities require that we transform our silence into the courage to use our voices and skills that we have developed in our professionalization journeys. And in the process, let us learn to be better mentors, coaches, and sponsors.

Luz E. Herrera is a Professor at Texas A&M University School of Law.