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Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
—The Book of Psalms, 127: 3–5
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Even as a kid, I was into law and order. At a young age, I developed a correspondence with the FBI. Long before the CSI program appeared on television, I’d be the one taking fingerprints of my friends when most would be playing “cops and robbers.” I studied the techniques of the FBI and took plaster casts of footprints, trying to fine-tune my own detective talents and interests. It was my plan to serve as an FBI agent; my favorite number was 24, the age required to join.
Growing up in a Sabbath observant Jewish household in Forest Hills, New York, I was aware of other obligations too. At the tender age of fourteen, I joined the local Chevra Kadisha (Jewish burial society). I learned at a very young age the religious rites and observances in preparing people who passed away for their proper spiritual wash and the donning of shrouds. My grandfather Max Schoenwalter’s best friend Irving Schoen (who had fled Germany years before) had passed away on a Saturday, and I was the only one who was able to stand watch and officiate. It is the clearest memory I have of service wherein nobody can say “thank-you,” and I learned at a very young age that there were “no pockets in the Kitel” (shrouds). Essentially, at fourteen I learned we would have the privilege to live for a snapshot of time without the ability to take anything with us, and that the legacy of what was important would be memorialized in our deeds.
The law-and-order side of my life emerged again when I took the somewhat unorthodox step (for someone like me) of becoming an auxiliary police officer with the New York Police Department. I had the privilege of donning an NYPD uniform and being introduced to my first bulletproof vest as a gift from my parents. I would walk a beat at the age of eighteen, volunteering my time for ten years in the 112th Police Precinct where I lived. As I went into college and eventually law school, I would often lecture on crime prevention and public safety at local organizations, and I saw firsthand how important it was to help people and properly assess the vulnerability of those in need. Later I would reflect on how that empowered me to take on controversial cases in which justice needed to be served.
In the summer of 1984, I was accepted to be an intern on Capitol Hill for Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY). I also joined the late, great Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro who that summer was selected by Walter Mondale to be the Democratic nominee for vice president of the United States. My time in Washington was a formative experience. I often developed the same spiritual reaction to visiting historical sites in the nation’s capital as I do in religious prayer. I never took for granted the liberties and freedoms our founding fathers sought on our shores and the extraordinary sacrifices made by so many to see that the United States remains a safe haven for those at risk and those in need.
Throughout my education, I had the benefit of a warm and loving family. My mother had perhaps the greatest impact on me. I can still hear her shrieks of happiness when I finally passed the bar exam. Immediately, she called my father’s receptionist, who in turn shouted: “Ruth in a booth, get Leon on the phone, she has great news!”
Oddly enough, it was my time as a federal prosecutor after I graduated from law school that gave me the greatest insight into immigration law. From 1989 until 1993, I worked in the Eastern District of New York as a special assistant United States attorney. I am forever indebted to Robert Begleiter and Scott Dunn, two former federal prosecutors who mentored me, trained me as a lawyer, and permitted me to participate in an immigration raid and multiple other prosecutions in Brooklyn. I even participated in a notorious refugee case when the United States attorney for the Eastern District prosecuted Haitians interdicted on international waters.
My service gave me a good sense of the resources the government had available to remove the bad eggs from our shores—and the political nature of this arena. A Cuban national could set foot on dry land and get a green card within a year, whereas a Haitian national could be stopped and taken into custody in international waters. I saw firsthand a system that was not uniform and that discriminated against people based on their national origins. A system of laws that met the economic needs for one generation but had a patchwork of bandages to address modern challenges rather than uniformly setting standards to protect our homeland and ensure that the greatest entrepreneurs and risk-takers found a home in America’s corridors of business. My time as a federal prosecutor representing the United States government and its many agencies (United States Army, FBI, etc.) afforded me with an opportunity to develop my own sea legs and to not be intimidated by our government’s reach and resources.
Also around this time, in 1991, I joined Hatzolah, a volunteer ambulance service in the New York area. It was right before my daughter Raquel was born. She was the first girl in our family, and I was concerned because she did not come with any instruction booklet. I figured it was best that I learn firsthand how to protect her, if needed. For the past twenty-five years, I’ve remained a certified emergency medical technician (EMT) in New York State, often going on calls during work hours, evenings, and weekends to help complete strangers. I’ve always kept in mind that I’ll be judged by what my children see and not what I say.
At last, I came to join Wildes & Weinberg, P.C., the firm my father had founded. Following in Dad’s footsteps was my destiny. Most kids grew up wanting to be a fireman or policeman—I certainly had a flirtation with that. My father, by inspiring me through his exemplary character and friendship, convinced me that this path came closest to those life-saving services. On any given Sunday when I was young, we would go to the office. There I would spend hours cutting scrap paper, interrupted by an outing to a nearby waterfall park at Fifty-third and Madison, where Dad and I would dine on kosher sandwiches my mother had packed for us. We’ve been paying rent at 515 Madison Avenue for the fifty-three years that I have been fortunate to be alive. My Dad’s work ethic and success paved the way ultimately for me to manage his practice, but it was his diligence and scholarship that inspired me to become a lawyer.
Let me make it plain—my connection with my father’s office didn’t end when my paper-cutting days were over. I went to college two days a week (from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m.) and worked the remaining three days in Dad’s practice. This gave me a chance to come up through the ranks, often sleeping outside overnight for a few bucks so I could get on line for an early appointment at the federal building downtown for our clients.
After one sleepless night (and being solicited by prostitutes while waiting on the line), I remember meeting Paloma Picasso as my father accompanied her to her green card interview. Some years later, when she decided to abandon her lawful permanent residence, I accompanied her myself to the immigration offices. What a treat it was to see some of the private artwork that her notorious father, Pablo Picasso, had painted for her before I took her downtown.
All these experiences amounted to a private tutelage in addition to my formal legal training. By the time I sat down with my own clients, I already had a good sense that these individuals were not just paperwork. They were part of a magnificent, tremendously important journey like the one that brought my family to America. To this day, each story remains a sacred trust.
My commitment to public service shouldn’t be a surprise, having worked on Capitol Hill, studied the law, and put in a stint as a prosecutor. My slogan for the many campaigns that I ran for city council and ultimately mayor of Englewood, New Jersey, was “Public Service. Public Trust.” In 2004, I became the thirty-sixth mayor of the city where my wife Amy and I live, and I found myself thrust into a remarkable vantage point for appreciating my life as an immigration lawyer. The New Jersey League of Municipalities entrusted me with the position of chairman for its Immigration Task Force. I had the privilege of traveling the state, meeting with counterpart mayors, and participating in local and international mayors’ conferences.
From a policy viewpoint, however, the situation was depressing. While presidents and Congress left our immigration laws dormant, our nation’s cities saw an influx of immigration and suffered its collateral consequences. Muster zones with day laborers filled our nation’s streets. Stacking conditions developed in our cities—residential corridors where illegal tenancies were created by landlords, forcing people to live in precarious conditions. I met with families who lost loved ones and first responders who were put in harm’s way by the gross inaction of our federal officials in Washington.
At the same time, I often spent weekends marrying couples, and welcoming their families into my Sabbath home so my children would encounter love in all shapes, sizes, and the magnificence of the diversity to which I was exposed. They would see an African American couple jumping over a broom in my living room, which was customary in the days of slavery when there was no officiant, and others taking photos of my grandparents’ passports neatly framed in my household as well. My children appreciated their heritage as they saw others revel in their own.
In many ways, a lot of the different worlds that I had lived in came together when I was wrapping up my second term as mayor in 2009. This is when Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi threatened to sleep within our city environs. Gaddafi succeeded in pitching a tent and sleeping in Paris, only to be denied by Mayor Bloomberg in New York City when the Libyan leader wanted to do the same in Central Park. This was the dictator’s flamboyant way of traveling. Bloomberg said no, and then Gaddafi sought to sleep on a property owned by his government within the City of Englewood.
Also at this time, Gaddafi extended a warm welcome to the recently released Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on his return to Libya. That event, and Gaddafi’s planned trip to New York to attend a United Nations General Assembly, offended many—the dictator embraced al-Megrahi publicly in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Some 259 people died as a result of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, and thirty-three of them had hailed from New Jersey.
I found it offensive that Gaddafi offered a hero’s welcome to a convicted terrorist. I was infuriated and publicly stated that our community would not forget his acts of terrorism nor pitch a white tent and red carpet for the Libyan dictator. For years his government had not paid a nickel of property taxes, and my police department was required to protect the location and our public works to remove their rubbish without fee. The property that he intended for his temporary residence received visits from agents of the Secret Service and the close protection division of the State Department. The property itself had been in a state of disrepair for many years, but in recent months the Libyans began to renovate it. Together with my code enforcement officials and some fancy footwork in Bergen County Superior Court, we were able to stop the construction, and Gaddafi was forced to move on to find other sleeping arrangements.
Ultimately the dictator was forced to sleep at a United Nations facility. The State Department was upset and concerned to protect its own political interest in other countries, but I could not for the life of me imagine giving the progenitor of modern-day terrorism a good night’s sleep and safe haven. I went on British television and stated proudly, “I am an American and a Jew, and I will not forget the souls lost from my home state.”
I stood firm despite all the negative press Gaddafi ultimately hired (not to mention the thousands of disciples of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, who staged a major rally outside the United Nations to show their love and support). I have to admit, though, that my police chief felt it wise for the city’s Jewish mayor to receive twenty-four-hour close protection by Englewood’s finest. Despite all the brouhaha, I don’t regret it. This event resonated and hit a cord in my family’s DNA.
Another strand in the tapestry of my life is education. I have had the privilege now of teaching immigration law as an adjunct professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law for nearly a decade. I had good preparation—my father taught the same class for more than thirty-three years. Having sat through his class prep as well as attending and taping many of his class sessions was an excellent foundation for my own professional life. To this day, one of my greatest exercises is learning the immigrant story of each of my law students and developing a relationship with them during the course of a semester. I spend many days mentoring my students, advising them that 95 percent of their practice will evolve as an iceberg, below eye level view.
The best talents in our field remain those who are affected personally by their own family’s narrative and journey to this great nation. As the law evolves, the one common denominator that binds many of the professionals in this arena are the beautiful stories and the efforts families have made to settle on our shores. What follows are some of my more memorable ones.