Carlos Spector, El Paso’s most prominent immigration attorney and a champion for the right to asylum, is gravely ill with cancer at a Houston hospital, his family said.
Spector’s family has started a GoFundMe campaign to bring him home so he can spend his last days in El Paso, said his daughter, Alejandra Spector.
Carlos Spector has been treated for three weeks at the MD Anderson Cancer Treatment Center in Houston, where doctors determined that he likely would not survive surgery for the sarcoma in his throat, Alejandra said.
“And they said, ‘You need to go home and just spend what time you have left,’” she said.
The family is looking at using an air ambulance service to bring him to El Paso, which could cost $25,000. The GoFund me campaign, which is seeking to raise $50,000, is meant to cover that and other costs the family has incurred while in Houston for the treatment.
Spector, 71, is an El Paso native and Air Force veteran. He is the grandson of Jewish immigrants who fled Russian pogroms. He has been an attorney for 40 years, specializing in immigration law.
It was Spector’s advocacy that created the opportunity for Mexicans fleeing drug violence to qualify for amnesty in the United States, said Linda Rivas, a senior trial attorney for the El Paso County Attorney’s Office and former executive director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center.
“I think some would argue that he really started Mexican asylum. Mexican asylum was unheard of, and he really was able to prove that this issue with narco violence and the threats to people’s lives was something that the (Mexican) government could not control, was not willing to control,” Rivas said. “He was able to show that there were groups of people who were more vulnerable than others and did fit the definitions of asylum and should be eligible for asylum and not be ignored just because they were Mexican.”
In a 2020 interview with the University of Texas at El Paso, where he was being given UTEP’s Gold Nugget Award, Spector spoke about his unique approach to the law and human rights.
“I think my biggest contribution to my profession is the fact that I am a public interest human rights attorney working in the private context. That is to say, my law firm funds my human rights work,” he said.
Even as he grew very sick, his focus was on his clients, Alejandra Spector said.
“As soon as he got the cancer diagnosis, he had all of these ideas, and he started calling Las Americas. ‘I have this case, and I need to make sure that this guy’s OK.’ All he could think about was one of his clients,” she said.
When asked to describe Spector as a father, Alejandra said he was “one of my best friends.”
“He’s generous. Very generous. Whenever I needed anything, it was never even a question, even if it seemed, maybe to some people, like far-fetched. He was always like, ‘No, we’ll make it happen.’”
The post Carlos Spector, champion of immigrant rights, facing final days as family seeks help to bring him home to El Paso appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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