After Years Pursuing Citizenship This Austinite Questions Her Future in the U.S.

Over the course of a 48-hour period from May 9-11, Mishell achieved more milestones than many accomplish in a lifetime.

On May 9, she graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, walking across the stage on campus as a part of the College of Liberal Arts ceremony.

The next day, after 13 years living in the United States, she took her Oath of Allegiance as a U.S. citizen. She didn’t have much time to soak in the joyous occasion at the federal courthouse in Downtown Austin, as she needed to hustle to a family celebration in honor of her graduation in Southwest Austin.

Then on May 11, she attended the universitywide graduation ceremony. As she pingponged around that weekend, she even managed to sneak in an appearance at the wedding of one of her closest friends, slipping out of her cap and gown and into wedding attire.

Amid the whirlwind, she prioritized one thing: registering to vote. She registered the day of her naturalization ceremony on May 10. “I cried registering, I was ecstatic,” she said in an email.

In October, she voted in a U.S. election for the first time. She did so from abroad, as she is currently serving as Austin’s ambassador to Angers, France, one of Austin’s sister cities. “I was very excited about that, because I had been waiting for years to be able to exercise that civil right,” she said.

During the campaign, she became frustrated by Donald Trump and JD Vance’s negative portrayal of immigrants. “As an immigrant and also an immigration justice advocate, it just would make my blood boil,” she said.

As she watched the 2024 presidential election results come in, she began to fear for the U.S. immigrant community, immigration advocates, and her family. She wondered if the country that had so recently minted her citizenship was really the place that she wanted to live.

Twists and Turns of Immigration

Mishell was born in Querétaro, Mexico. (Because Mishell’s immigration case is complicated by sensitive family matters, the Chronicle is using only her first name).

Her journey to college graduate and U.S. citizen has been a long road. In 2011, her father moved to the U.S. on a work visa as an entrepreneur, bringing the whole family – Mishell, her two siblings, and her mom. The transition was challenging. Mishell attended Patton Elementary School in Austin and was the only Spanish-speaker in her class. While she had learned English in her Catholic school in Mexico, she had an accent, which became an insecurity.

Mishell’s younger sister Nicole was 6 years old when the family moved to the U.S. She remembers the struggles of not being able to communicate with her kindergarten teacher. But there were good times too. The family built a community with other Austinites going through the same process, and when her dad’s visa renewed every two years, the family would go out to dinner to celebrate.

As the years wore on, the two sisters adjusted to their new lives, until a new challenge arose in 2017. The family’s straightforward immigration status was complicated when Mishell’s parents separated. They eventually divorced in 2018.

Shortly thereafter, her mother met a new man who was a U.S. citizen. They married in 2018, and the family’s immigration status began to clarify once more. Mishell’s mother obtained conditional legal permanent resident status in 2018 that was only good for two years because of the recency of the marriage.

As the oldest sibling, Mishell, 17 years old at the time, also began her process toward U.S. citizenship by becoming a permanent resident in 2019. It was a huge relief, as her father’s status would no longer extend to her when she turned 18. Because it was an expensive process, her two younger siblings did not pursue the same status, maintaining their legal status thanks to their father’s work visa.

Then, her mother and stepfather with U.S. citizenship divorced in 2020. Mishell’s siblings maintained their U.S. immigration status thanks to their father’s work visa, but Mishell and her mother found themselves in murkier water. The marriage had ended before Mishell and her mother had removed conditions on their residencies.

A Complicated Case

With their status in flux, Mishell and her mother weren’t sure if they would be sent back to Mexico. For that matter, they weren’t sure if their family would be split. They looked for new legal representation and got in touch with the attorneys at the Law Office of Karen J. Crawford in July 2019.

Ashley Morris, the immigration attorney who represented them, said it was a complicated case. It would take time, money, and a huge emotional toll. “You have a strong case, but it’s not going to be a straightforward path,” Morris told the women.

Morris said that she was impressed by Mishell before even meeting her. In letters of recommendation from her teachers, one referenced an organization that she had started to ensure that students did not eat lunch alone. Another said she was one of the most impressive students she had taught in her 20 years of teaching. On top of that, Mishell had won a long list of awards and honors.

While these achievements don’t seem directly related to her immigration process, Morris said they helped show that Mishell warranted a “discretionary benefit.” Were she to be denied, the community and school would suffer as a result. The potential hardship of Mishell and her mother being separated from her two other siblings and her father also boosted the case’s odds of success.

Morris filed their applications to remove conditions on their permanent residency in March 2020. Without this application filed on time, they would have automatically lost their residency, and could have been placed in removal proceedings. Seven months later they received a request for more evidence. And finally, in June 2021 they won their case. It had been a terrifying 18 months, but Mishell was on track for citizenship once more.

A Unique College Experience

As her case played out, Mishell was accepted to the University of Texas at Austin in January 2020. She was proud that she had managed to navigate the U.S. college application process largely on her own. But, even after her acceptance into the university, her immigration case hung over her.

“I was just kind of standing at the edge of a cliff because I didn’t know it was gonna happen with my status,” she said.

Despite all the uncertainty, Mishell excelled at the university. She was admitted to the Liberal Arts Honors Program and majored in humanities and French. She was an inaugural member of the university’s Texas Folklorico Dance Company and eventually was named one of nine College of Liberal Arts Dean’s Distinguished Graduates – an award for “students who have distinguished themselves in the areas of scholarship, leadership, and service.”

Partially due to the pandemic, she lived at home. It allowed her to save cash and strengthen her relationship with her mother after the divorce. Despite living at home, Mishell led a worldly college life. She studied abroad in Querétaro, her hometown, and spent a summer in Lyon, France.

As her college career began to wind down, her immigration process appeared to, at long last, be nearing finality too. In February 2024, her two siblings became U.S. citizens. Three months later Mishell was celebrating her own citizenship in the federal courthouse.

And, after her summer abroad, the allure of France lingered. In her last semester, she approached a French professor to see how she might find a job in the country after graduation. In March 2024, the professor presented her with a pamphlet about a program in Angers, France. The city, which sits about 180 miles southwest of Paris, has a program where it brings in representatives from its sister cities to educate people from Angers about language and culture from the visitors’ hometowns.

Two Paths

Mishell was selected as Austin’s representative in Angers and began her yearlong program in September. Much of her time is spent in classrooms, presenting to students about Austin and the U.S. It is a challenging country to explain to a foreigner, and the election did not make it any easier.

On November 6, she woke up and saw the electoral map covered in red. Trump was going to win. “I just started sobbing,” she said.

That week, schools began asking her to come in to speak about what had happened. She said that she was “under emotional duress” and that the students’ questions were hard to answer. “’How could Americans elect Trump if he’s been convicted of 30-something crimes?’” she recalled students asking her. “They just couldn’t wrap their heads around that.”

They wanted to know how the Trump election would impact their lives and Europe in general. She understood why they had these questions, but she felt that she would need an entire semester to really explain. Instead, she had about five minutes.

Now, Mishell said she sees two paths for her future. In the first, she remains in France. She has seen what the French quality of life looks like, and it is appealing. Not many U.S. employers would offer 45 paid vacation days to a recent college graduate. She sees it as a country that will protect her rights as a woman, too.

Her sister Nicole, a freshman at Texas State University, said this would be a totally reasonable decision. She has seen the nastiness of Trump’s America firsthand. After the election, men brought signs to campus reading “Women are property” and “Homo sex is sin.” The university released a statement that they were not university students, staff, or faculty.

“If I were her, I would literally just stay there,” Nicole said. “I love her and miss her, but I know that that’s probably what’s going to make her happiest.”

But Mishell sees a second path: go back and fight like hell. Her instinct is to fight back against the horrors she has seen the Trump administration inflict on immigrants. Her own immigration experience gave birth to her passion for immigration and human rights. She interned at Crawford’s legal firm and saw how fulfilling it was to help someone else navigate the uncertainty that she once faced.

It’s an uncertainty that her father is now facing. At one point, during Trump’s first term, he had to renew his work visa, and Mishell remembered him being immensely stressed. Now, he has permanent resident status and is three years away from obtaining citizenship, but that hasn’t quashed his fears entirely. “Even though he’s a legal permanent resident, you just never know,” Mishell said. “There’s always this fear whenever you don’t have citizenship status.”

She does see some reasons for hope. Shortly after the election, she returned to Austin with a delegation from Angers. Mayor Kirk Watson and City Council members spoke about the need to unite as a community. Not only did she see Austin as a counter to what had happened at the federal level, but at the state level too. “I saw that Austin, as a local government, is still going to fight like hell during the upcoming [legislative session],” she said.

It is a difficult decision. One that Mishell still has time to consider, as her contract is not up until October. But it is one that weighs on her. “I think there is a mixture of fear and frustration, but that always has to be washed out by a fiery spirit to not give up and keep the good fight going.”

This article appears in February 28 • 2025.