Lecture Addresses Who Benefits from Deferred Action for Immigrant Children

Joel Cruz-Esparza, assis­tant attor­ney gen­eral with the Office of the New Mex­ico Attor­ney, presents, “Are You Inter­ested to Learn Who Will Ben­e­fit Under the Deferred Action for Child­hood Arrivals?” on Wednes­day, Sept. 19 from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. in El Cen­tro de la Raza’s con­fer­ence room, located in Mesa Vista Hall on the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico cam­pus. Lunch will be provided.

Cruz-Esparza’s for­ma­tive years in the legal pro­fes­sion were as a legal ser­vices attor­ney. He worked for nine years with the Farm Worker Legal Cen­ter in Las Cruces, N.M., a branch of South­ern New Mex­ico Legal Ser­vices. He also worked as direc­tor of a Tri-County Cit­i­zen­ship Project with Cal­i­for­nia Rural Legal Assis­tance in Sali­nas, Calif.

Cruz-Esparza received a bach­e­lor of arts in psy­chol­ogy and a juris doc­tor­ate from the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at Los Ange­les. As an under­grad­u­ate, he attended the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, San Diego, and par­tic­i­pated in its Edu­ca­tion Abroad Pro­gram in Madrid, Spain, for one aca­d­e­mic year.

Cruz-Esparza was born in Torreon, Coahuila, Mex­ico, and, as a child, immi­grated to the United States with his par­ents and attended pub­lic schools in both coun­tries. He is fully bilin­gual and is now a nat­u­ral­ized United States citizen.

He lives in Albu­querque, N.M. with his wife and son.

This lec­ture is an install­ment of El Centro’s Speaker Series Forum Lit­er­atura y Letras.

For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact El Cen­tro at 277‑5020.

Media con­tact: Car­olyn Gon­za­les (505) 277‑5920; email: cgonzal@unm.edu