Between those touchpoints, the ICE officers revealed so much about the system.

A man was called up to the window, and then into the back. “We called you back here so we could just talk, away from everyone else,” the officer said. Never mind that we could all hear every word. The man asked to sit down; he was old, and standing was uncomfortable. They quickly obliged, trying to prove their humanity.

He’s been here for 40 years. He tried to leave in the 90s, after his asylum claim was denied. But the two countries that could claim him as a citizen both refused, and so he is stateless. Borders moved after he was born, so no one will issue him a passport.

The officers warned him that the higher-ups were going to tell them soon, maybe in the next 6 months, that he should be deported to some country in Africa.

US citizen children. Decades of paying taxes.

“I know, man,” one of the officers said. “And nothing at all on your record. You’re a good member of society. I get it. But illegal is illegal.”

Never mind that this statement is so completely wrong on multiple levels - moral, legal, factual.

“You should try Canada,” they told him. “Figure out on your own how to leave, because you don’t want to be sent to some country in Africa where you don’t know the language, you don’t know anyone. I don’t want to send you there. But it’ll be out of my hands.” (That’s what they all say, as I’ve mentioned.)

Never mind that the threat itself is steeped in racism.

Never mind that he’s stateless.

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A woman was called up to the window to discuss why she hadn’t yet left after registering with CBPHome, an app that used to be used to apply for entry to the United States, and now is used to facilitate departure. The government will often buy your plane ticket for you if you register correctly. But this woman had been waiting for two months.

And that very morning, she had faced a family emergency. It brought her to tears as she talked with the officer. He kept bringing the conversation back to the flight. Did she have money to buy tickets herself? Where was she living in the mean time? The family emergency affected her housing situation? What was her current address, then? She needed to reach out to CBPHome and ask them why they weren’t responding, before her next check-in in a month.

Never mind that the ICE officer and CBP all work for the Department of Homeland Security.

Never mind that she is a human being who never should have had to sit in the ICE office for 2 hours on the same day that she was dealing with so much on the outside.

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Just a glimpse. They aren’t my clients, but they are my neighbors. And they are yours, too.

At the beginning of this month, we reached 14 years since the MICA Project, the nonprofit where I work, opened its doors.

This week, my client told me that it has been 12 years since we started working together. We celebrated that milestone, as well as her freedom, when we walked out of the ICE office with another extension.

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Her daughter drew this picture while we sat in the ICE office: me, my client, and her daughter. She gave me a hug when she saw me, and again when we parted.

They feel like family. I’m the funny aunt who makes paper airplanes and can’t think of the Spanish word for skirt.

And I’m the one that comes up with strategies to try to prevent her mom from being detained by ICE. Because in this incredibly unfair system, I’m the only one, in this relationship, who has access to all of the information about ICE trends, immigration law, federal litigation, and all of the factors that affect whether someone walks out of ICE in handcuffs, or hand in hand with their child.

It’s still not always enough to stop a detention or deportation. Sometimes, I wish I really was a cool aunt who could go with them to the zoo, instead of the attorney that attempts to guide them through the legal labyrinth.

But either way, I’m pretty honored to be part of the picture.

Last week, one of my tasks was to talk with ICE so that perhaps a father could self-deport without getting detained along the way. His son had recently been deported, and he was terrified for his son’s safety. He applied to leave via CBPHome, the government app through which people notify the government of their intent to self-deport. They are theoretically eligible for a free plane ticket and an additional incentive payout if they use the app. But this father had been waiting a week and still hadn’t heard back. He didn’t care about the money, just about getting home safely to his son.

I reached out directly to ICE. They offered general, but not specific, assurance: If he is self-deporting, he shouldn’t be detained. They put a note in the database for whatever local office might be notified if ICE agents in the airport pull him aside.

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So many aspects of this interaction are illustrative.

1. People want safety: for themselves, but especially for their children. That is what drives much of the immigration to the United States. And in situations like this, it also is pushing this father to leave. He’s willing to put himself in danger to try to provide protection for his child.
   

2. The system is cruel: ICE cannot guarantee that he will not be detained while trying to self-deport. That is cruelty. And the system gives each individual actor unearned denial of responsibility. Both ICE officers I spoke with said that they have no control over CBPOne, nor do they have authority to guarantee him safe travel. It was not within their power. They tell me the same when they detain someone: It’s a decision made by the “higher-ups.” No one accepts responsibility, and thus cruelty thrives.
   

3. Asylum is not really about safety. Asylum is the application people file to tell the government they are afraid to return to their country. That the government, or individuals that the government cannot or will not control, will harm them. If that’s not about safety, what is it about? Politics. For decades, the government has restricted certain types of claims because they are afraid of “opening the floodgates.” This has been true under both Democrats and Republicans. I tell people all the time: it doesn’t matter how real your fear is, or even the fact that you will be killed if you are deported. It matters whether you fit into a politically acceptable box. It’s not about human rights. It’s not about preventing death. It’s about having an internationally acceptable system that allows us to deny responsibility for those who do die, because we’re ostensibly following “the” rules. Again: no one accepts responsibility, and thus cruelty thrives.

My time in the middle of the night felt necessary, and sometimes we succeeded in getting people evacuated. I don’t know if I actually needed to lose that much sleep in order to get those results. But it felt like if I had any information that would make people safer or more likely to get to safety, I had to share it. So I would communicate with my contacts (mostly veterans who were communicating with service members inside the airport), and then pass on their tips regarding safety, open gates, etc. to my clients.

This caused a certain amount of trauma. It’s embarrassing to admit, because I was never in any danger. But I was communicating with people who were begging for help, because people were shooting and their children were crying. And I was sleep-deprived.

Since then, I have studiously avoided work-related late nights. I set early deadlines for myself so that I am not in danger of needing to pull an all-nighter. My routine sleep schedule helps to keep my insomnia at bay.

And yet tonight, I am awake. My client’s family members are attending a visa interview across the ocean. I assured them that there was very little I could do in the moment to assist if problems arise. They can’t have me on speaker phone with them during the interview. Any requests for additional documents can be answered in the following days; it doesn’t need to be within just a few hours.

But I’ve been working with these clients for about as long as I have with the clients who were evacuated from Afghanistan. They’ve been separated from their families and waiting for this possibility of reunification for years. They haven’t been free to travel to visit their families, despite the fact that they themselves earned legal status.

So when they asked me many, many times if I could be available tonight, I said yes.

Tonight, I somehow feel more hope now, during these late night moments. The emails have slowed and I’m not being bombarded with news. The news is rarely good. Today, we learned that a private law firm was awarded a contract by the government to work on cases for unaccompanied minor children, which will have dire consequences. USCIS is trying to prevent even more people from getting work authorization. We learned of more shocking denials around the country of cases that would have been unquestionably approved in the past.

But my inbox is still at the moment. I’m not communicating with frantic clients, and I am not frantic, either. I am sitting in the quiet. Perhaps that’s why, for once, this quote that is part of my tattoo actually feels true.

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day [or night], I can hear her breathing.” -Arundhati Roy

I hope that you, too, are able to hear her sometime soon.

Multiple news outlets have reported that June and July have seen a surge of enforcement and detention of immigrants. It hasn’t happened in the obvious, showy way of Chicago and Minneapolis. It has happened beneath the public radar:

• at traffic stops, where someone might be sent off to be deported for a speeding ticket

• at ICE check-ins, where people who have followed every rule for years are told that their time is up: this time they are being detained, despite pending applications, a clean record, and years spent in this country

• at court hearings, where the entire system is being utilized as a deportation engine, rather than a neutral adjudicatory body

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The administration wanted to make sure I knew that my absence didn’t mean that the battle was on hold, so it was a particularly momentous week. Here are some examples of the way the administration fine-tuned its “under the radar” changes to feed the deportation machine, just in the last week:

• There are new proposed regulations to fine immigration attorneys if we do things that the judges don’t like; the government attorneys (prosecutors, basically), are exempt.

• There are rumors that the court is going to stop allowing virtual hearings, forcing us to spend hours and hours travelling to distant cities when every other court system in the nation has accepted the validity of webex. And when we’re traveling, guess what we can’t do? Take more cases.

• Two more judges were fired in the Chicago immigration court. Anyone who isn’t committed to deporting as many people as possible is gone. New judges were also announced this week. One of those assigned to Kansas City publicly shared a DHS post that reads, “Embrace patriotism. Fight for America.”

• Most disastrous, there is also a new policy that the asylum office will start referring cases to the court without interview. This is unprecedented, and possibly illegal. And then once those cases are before the court, the judges can pretermit them - ordering them deported without a hearing on the merits. This could result in thousands of people receiving removal orders in just a few short months, without any individualized consideration of their claims.

We know just how dangerous this is firsthand. St. Louis is gathering this evening to mourn the loss of two Guatemalan immigrants who were murdered in front of their one-year old child. Dad was deported. Mom was waiting on a hearing on her asylum claim, but she was left alone with three children. After trying to make it work, she decided to rejoin him in Guatemala. She and her husband were murdered just 1 month later. This is the result of the administration’s policy of mass deportation.

But I thought the vacation might be ruined after just forty-five minutes at our destination. One of the children had their adjustment-related meltdown, and I felt ready to have the same after I saw the inside of the cabin. It was old, with exposed plywood and closets from which something scurried when I opened the door. Then, my husband discovered that the sailboat’s mast had lost a piece on the road. Thirteen hours of hauling a sailboat to his “dream vacation” (largely based on a week of sailing), and it looked like he might not sail at all.

After another hour, he had secured a replacement part, although it wouldn’t come for the first few days. The kids were playing in the water, and I went out for a kayak ride. The lake was serene, hardly marred by boats or houses or interruptions of any sorts. A mother duck swam by with her 4 ducklings, and none of them fell down a sewer grate.

I spent at least an hour during the drive telling Ken about the many, many ways this administration is attacking immigrants. Summer days are long. By the time everyone is home from work and camp and extracurriculars, I’m too tired to tell him about pretermission and UAC asylum interview scheduling.

A couple of the big challenges that I shared with him were: (1) the targeted scheduling of unaccompanied children for asylum interviews, and (2) unhinged scheduling of immigration court hearings.

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We first heard via our listservs that unaccompanied minors are being prioritized for interviews. Many of these clients filed for asylum pre-pandemic, and their cases have sat for years and years. The Trump administration’s own policies have pushed off their interviews. They have often used a “first in, first out” policy in a supposed attempt to combat fraud. But this means that applications that don’t get scheduled immediately languish - indefinitely.

By the end of the week, we had received 5 interview notices for unaccompanied minor client asylum interviews. This alone does not seem nefarious. But then came yet another decision from the Board of Immigration Appeals, a binding decision that must be followed nationwide: Matter of A-G-O-F-, 29 I&N Dec. 772 (BIA 2026). It makes it much harder to win an asylum case based on child abuse unless you went to the police and the police refused to help.

The Kansas City immigration court started assigning cases to judges in Texas. After hiring several new judges, 3 have now resigned in the past few months. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about why judges - two of whom applied to join the court during this administration - didn’t feel they could carry out their duties.

The cases that are going to Texas are being moved from years in the future to less than 30 days from now. We are now prepping for several unplanned cases with less than 30 days’ notice, often double or even triple booked on the same day. The court has a filing deadline of 30 days, but they also have the authority to set cases for hearings with less than 30-days’ notice.

With less than 30 days, it’s hard to put together a strong case. People often need time to obtain records from their home country, to work through the re-traumatization of writing a declaration about the worst things that have ever happened to them. I often work with expert witnesses on country conditions, or with doctors and therapists who complete forensic and mental health exams. I can’t put together the strongest possible case with less than 30 days, and especially not when I have several short-notice hearings scheduled around the same time.

These are the types of decisions that don’t make the news, but they drive deportations nonetheless. It’s horrific to see masked men abducting people on the streets. They make it obvious that the rule of law is no longer functioning. But when our legal system itself has co-opted the rule of law for political means - it’s less obvious, but just as dangerous, and perhaps even more so because it’s less likely to garner the resistance we saw out on the streets.

I suspect that the vast majority of harms in our world require such speculative reflection. Even (perhaps especially) in this era of data and information and fake news and real news, such speculation asks us to break through the barrier of knowing and to instead feel.

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The dearth of feeling is one of the things that kept me awake the other night. The jail told me my client was “indisposed.” Hospitalized, in trouble, deported, dead? She had been sick, and we were trying to escalate a request for appropriate medical care. So hospital or morgue seemed the most probable.

I knew that if she died, I would feel an immense amount of guilt for not having moved heaven and earth earlier in her illness. I was hired to represent her in immigration proceedings, but because she was detained, her wellbeing became part of my responsibility.

As I laid in bed, trying to quiet the looping fears, I wondered whether the people with power over her cared. Would they be upset if she died? If their decision to keep her detained, or their medical neglect, directly led to her death?

The same day that my client became “indisposed” and unavailable to meet with me, an immigration judge told me that he wasn’t willing to consider an earlier hearing date for my client, even though her children are facing newly heightened danger abroad. He reminded me that the court has a huge backlog, and my suggestion of swapping my own clients’ hearing dates would be too much work. In the balance, workload won out over a mother’s pain. And yet, who was I to judge? I hadn’t scheduled a weekend visit with a client because of my own busy schedule.

I eventually learned that my client had been hospitalized. I was relieved, and still worried. I told her mother, who understandably expressed concern. I tried to comfort her without saying, I thought she was dead. She cannot sit at her daughter’s bedside, and it took a couple days before she was allowed a video visit with her.

How often do we engage in enough speculative reflection to soften our hearts? So many of the harms of this era of immigration enforcement are as unknown as the deep seas, witnessed by only a few. Their pain ripples outward, but it is suppressed by the pressure of the rush of information and daily life and busyness. We see the statistics, or even read the story. But we want the layer of separation that allows us to avoid the pain itself.

Perhaps that’s a healthy hesitancy. But how, then, do we galvanize a movement that is ready to act? When do we stand up and say that immigrants should not be suffering in detention, even if we don’t know the name or the exact story of those in distress?

This, I think, is the purpose of speculative reflection. An opportunity to imagine the pain with enough distance to feel motivated, rather than overwhelmed. You don’t know my client. You don’t know how she became ill (although I will say that the conditions of confinement were a direct cause). You don’t know her mother, or how the news of her daughter’s hospitalization is affecting her.

And because of that, you can imagine. You know this is a real situation, but you don’t need to shed tears or lose sleep because of its vagueness and distance. You can recognize that this is happening to more than just my client - there are many reports of immigrants growing ill and even dying in immigration detention. Perhaps you can make connections with broader issues of disregarded dignity in systems of incarceration, beyond ICE detention.

We have to engage. I want to turn away, every day. From the news. From the stories of my own clients.

But we have to find a way, because we cannot stand by and let more and more people die. We must find the will to speak out and to take action.

Speculative reflection. On known harms. May it move us beyond indifference.

As expected, nothing happened.

If you don’t show up at your court hearing, you are ordered deported. But if the judge quits and the hearing isn’t cancelled, you sit in an empty waiting room.

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I had the advantage of knowing this would happen, since our immigration court sends out updates through a liaison to our professional association, AILA. But if I were appearing in court as an individual without an attorney, I would have no way of knowing. Even as an attorney from out of town, I would not know.

Our immigration court used to be great about answering the phone, but that is no longer the case. They only had 3 judges for quite a while, but this year they have been staffing up. So far, that means more judges, often for just short stretches of time, and no additional support staff.

And that is the reason both for court calendars that are not updated, and that they don’t have capacity to answer the phone.

It was a relatively minor inconvenience for me. I knew my client wouldn’t be ordered deported. I knew we didn’t have to prep for a hearing. I logged on so that I would have screenshots in case there was an administrative error, but I didn’t expect much to happen. The hearing started before summer camp, so my daughter came to the office with me and restocked our paper shelves.

For someone without an attorney, it would have been a different story. They would have driven to Kansas City, even if they lived several hours away, because pro se individuals cannot appear via webex. They would have dealt with the stress of thinking their future would be decided that very day. If they had an attorney who hadn’t received the staffing updates, they would have spent hours practicing their testimony and gathering evidence. And likely paying that attorney for the time they spent to prep.

Even for my client, it was very stressful knowing she had a hearing on the calendar, despite my reassurances that it wouldn’t take place. Because the system doesn’t allow immigrants to mess up, or not have capacity, or even just be human and forget. If they don’t show up when they are supposed to, they are ordered deported.

Just a glimpse of how the system functions (or doesn’t). In the end, any day that a client is not ordered deported is a good day.

The judicial branch offers one of the critical “checks” on judicial and legislative power. But seeing it in action is bizarre, to say the least. Like every other branch of government, it’s subject to the political leanings of those within. It’s far from the neutral arbiter we learn about in high school government class.

Before ending up at the Supreme Court, most cases are decided by a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. Cases are more likely to end up before the Supremes when several Federal Circuits have “split” on the same issue.

I have traditionally limited my practice of immigration law to the immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals. But last spring, I filed my first “petition for review” before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. That case finally came up for oral argument last month.

I showed up to court in a teal dress suit and navy blue jacket. I regretted my fashion choice almost immediately. The entire court room was filled with black suits and white button down shirts. I’ve previously heard people joke about how only new attorneys wear their “funeral clothes” to court. But perhaps circuit court is always a funeral.

My fashion faux pas did not affect my client’s case, since I had one of the best and brightest arguing on her behalf, a colleague from Kansas City. (And he knew the dress code!) I briefed the case extensively over the last year or so, but the arguments themselves focused on an obscure procedural issue. As I’ve written before, it’s mind boggling that my client’s future paths will be circumscribed by a decision on such minute puzzle pieces of legalese (specifically, whether equitable tolling is permissible or or not given the procedural posture of her case).

Circuit court was a culture shock. In addition to my ill-chosen clothing, my gender was off. Out of about thirty people in the courtroom, I was one of six women. One was the clerk, one argued a case, and three appeared to be college students there to observe. All three judges were old white men.

While these dynamics were surprising to me, I knew the federal level differed substantially from immigration court. As one immigration judge said, immigration court deals with “death penalty cases in a traffic court setting.” (Judge Dana Leigh Marks) The Eighth Circuit, on the other hand, gave two litigators 20 minutes each to argue about whether the color chartreuse was a functional feature of a water hose for trademark purposes. Some asylum cases aren’t even given 40 minutes.

In immigration court, procedures vary based on who is president. When my grandmother died several years ago, both the government attorney (prosecutor) and the judge offered to reset not just one, but both of my hearings that week. But earlier this year, a judge denied a continuance on a colleague’s case where the client had just given birth via c-section and was still on heavy-duty painkillers. He then found her not credible based on her difficulty testifying.

In “real” court, if a client doesn’t show up, a warrant might be issued for their arrest. In immigration court, if you are absent, you are ordered deported. In “real” court, the federal rules of evidence are strictly applied. In immigration court, evidence is admissible if it is relevant, and the judge can simply give it the weight it deserves - less or more depending on their inclination.

I’m not assigning the label of “real” just to be snarky. Immigration courts are administrative bodies under the US Department of Justice, not independent Article III courts. Article III judges receive lifetime appointments and salary protections under the Constitution. Immigration judges are employees of the executive branch and lack true judicial independence. Trump has fired more than 100 judges since January 2025. The rest are afraid to approve cases, because then they won’t have job security.

Women are overrepresented in immigration law. In all practice areas, women made up 38% of lawyers in the United States in 2022. That same year, AILA - the largest professional organization of immigration lawyers in the US - estimated that their membership was 63% non-male (women or “other”). This could launch a completely different analysis, because the factors driving female membership of the immigration bar are in fact the same factors influencing the makeup the legal profession as a whole.

I’m still waiting to hear what the Eighth Circuit will decide in my case. I am told that I had one of the best possible “panels” (the group of 3 judges hearing the case). I’m preparing to file another case with the Eighth, and next time I’ll know the dress code. There’s much more to say about the legitimacy of this system, but I’ll end this meandering post and save that for another time.

From an adult perspective, it was not a big step. From hers, it certainly was. These wins are huge. But if you look at the big picture, we’ve lost so much ground.

I’m still all for celebrating when we can.

Protections for victims of crime

At the end of May, a federal court ruled that certain groups of victims require extra protections to prevent their deportation. MICA (the nonprofit where I work) had two different clients released from detention as a result! This is one of the biggest wins - it could have prevented at least 2-3 deportations of my other clients since January 2025, and it is already preventing detentions and deportations.

Hitting un-pause

For months now, USCIS has not been deciding asylum applications1 for people from any country, or any application for people from 39 travel ban countries. The travel ban is focused on people applying for visas to come to the United States, and it currently still applies to 75 different countries. USCIS was applying that ban to pause decisions on all case types for people from about half of those countries. A federal court decided that was illegal, so USCIS has been ordered to resume processing those applications. We’ll see if they actually do so, or if the government appeals or asks the court to “stay” its decision so that they can keep the pause in place.

Not a win: Green Cards inside the US, or no?

The headlines announced that most people would have to leave the US to get a green card, according to a new USCIS policy. Then, a couple days later, in response to outcries from the business community, USCIS said never mind, some people can still get green cards here in the United States.

What actually happened? Well, it’s way more complex than the headlines. USCIS’ new policy does not actually say that most people have to leave the US. It says that officers should use their discretion - which they have always had - to analyze whether someone should have undergone consular processing (the process of obtaining a green card from outside the US) instead of applying from within the US.

When they said they rolled back the policy? Not so. They just reinterpreted it for the public. The new guidance remained in place.

Under that new guidance, USCIS officers are expected to deny more cases. And since they might not be inclined to do so, in at least some offices, USCIS officers who conduct interviews with applicants for green cards can no longer make decisions on those cases. All cases are being reviewed, and from what we’ve seen around the country, many more cases are going to be denied than ever before.

Shutting down legal pathways

I’ve written before about how many people have no pathway to status in the US. The above decisions all apply to the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate existing pathways. Prior to the decision described above, they were deporting people with pending U-visas, T-visas, and VAWA cases. They were refusing to make decisions on cases that could have been approved, absent the travel ban pause. And now they are limiting the use of a legal channel created by Congress - adjustment of status (the process of applying for a green card within the US).

We need more pathways. We also need to protect the pathways that exist. Today, let’s celebrate the litigators, very often from nonprofits, who are eking out these wins.

As we began walking home, she said, “It all seems like a waste.” I gathered that we were back on the topic of death and illness. “Every candle. Every time I blew the seeds.” (dandelions, of course.)

“Do you mean you were wishing for her to get better?”

“Yes! And none of it worked.”

It was one of those rare parenting moments where I felt like I could see my perfect response spooling out in front of me. “I understand how you feel - I feel that way about prayer sometimes.”

“That too,” she agreed. “I’ve been praying for her! And we lit the candles.” We’ve had a prayer candle burning off and on for months, now, on the mantle.

“Yes, and sometimes we don’t get what we are asking for when we pray, or wish. But when you blow on the seeds, you’re not just wishing, right? What else are you doing?”

I can’t actually remember what she said, but it wasn’t spreading seeds. So I offered that secondary (or primary, depending on your point of view) purpose to her, and she quickly agreed. “Yes, that’s also why I like doing it!”

“And prayer,” I added, “Remember how we talked about prayer adding more love to the world?” Her affirmation was less enthusiastic, but still present. “Even if we don’t get what we’re asking for, our prayers add more love. I hope that your Aunt felt surrounded by the love of everyone’s prayers.”

I was proud of my analogy, but the topic of death had put Dorothy into a mood. She switched to her despair over how humans treat the earth. “Everything that seems good really isn’t!” she said. I reminded her that our evening at the park had been beautiful, and she countered that humans had extracted materials from the earth to build the playground, which harmed the natural world. I pointed out the sunset, pink and orange. She shrugged her shoulders.

It reminds me of how I feel when a client is released from ICE detention. Sometimes there is an initial euphoria. But often, there is a feeling of despair. All that work, and we got one person out. But they still face such enormous challenges, and so many people remain detained that we cannot get to. Sometimes the release initiates a cascade of work, or new issues for the client to face. One of my recently released clients is struggling with housing insecurity. Another was unable to get his identification documents, including his work permit and driver license, returned.

I’m left staring at the sunset and shrugging. Or maybe even crying. For months now, I have felt the blurring of my grief over my sister-in-law’s cancer journey and recent passing with my feelings about my clients’ hardships and the state of this country. It all runs together, the colors blurring. Neither the medical interventions nor the prayers were enough, and the magical tendrils of love floating through the air do little to comfort me most of the time. Legal intervention (and lots of prayers, from some clients) is not enough, either, more often than not.

Transitions like funerals and graduations leave us determined to embrace life, live life to its fullest. But there is also illness, incarceration, insomnia. Sometimes we cannot find it within ourselves to appreciate the sunset or the legal win. Perhaps that’s okay. Maybe we get through this by accepting the absence of hope and avoiding the descent into despair. Shrugging at the sunset, and holding onto the belief that dawn lies on the other side of the darkness.

1. Once you are detained, it’s almost impossible to get out in less than 2-3 weeks. Even if you were wrongly detained.

Your only chance of getting out in 2-3 weeks is (1) if you entered the US on a visa, making you eligible for bond, AND you have an attorney ready to request bond at your very first hearing. Or (2) you have an attorney ready to file a habeas petition as soon as you are detained, and you are detained in a circuit that hasn’t expressly negated habeas legal theories, and you get a judge willing to grant.

One of my clients came to the US and did everything she possibly could to regularize her status. She applied for and received temporary status. She applied to renew her temporary status. She applied for asylum before the one-year deadline. But she was stopped for a minor traffic violation, and now she’s been detained for 6 weeks. Even though we believe she is wrongfully detained.

Can you imagine losing 6 weeks (and often more) despite having followed all of the rules as well as you could? Being separated from your child, your partner, your home, your work? When someone is detained, the family is frantic (and understandably so). In the beginning, I was frantic, imagining that somehow I could convince officials that this person shouldn’t be detained. That they needed to get out. That they and their family would suffer. That even 1 or 2 or 3 days was too much.

Now I know: If you are detained, there is nothing I can do that will get you out sooner than 3 weeks. And that’s only in the best possible case.

2. Some people sit in detention for a month without ICE even filing the paperwork to get a hearing date.

Through the rapid response line, we frequently screen folks detained by ICE and see that they have been detained for a month or so, but no hearing is scheduled. Sometimes ICE hasn’t filed the paperwork to switch the case to a new immigration court. Sometimes they just haven’t alerted the court that the person is detained. Occasionally it’s court error, but not often.

Around once a week, I or someone else from the rapid response line contacts ICE to tell them that they have let someone sit in detention without taking care of the basic paperwork to move their case forward. Who knows how long it would stay stuck if no one reached out.

Meanwhile, someone is sitting in detention - again, we’re talking family separation, terrible jail food, enormous bills just to communicate with your own family.

3. The best legal strategy might sound like a scam.

This one is true of both detained and non-detained cases. This week, we told a client that even though his green card application is pending, we need to file it again. Luckily, as a nonprofit we don’t have to charge him any fees to do this. But a regular firm would probably need to charge him $2,000 or so in order to not lose money.

Why do we need to refile? Because one of the pieces of evidence that qualified him for the application was a piece of paper issued by the Department of Justice. USCIS has decided that some of the letters from the DOJ don’t include the right magic words, even though the words used have been approved in hundreds of cases during previous years. So now, if you don’t want to lose your status when your application is denied for an absolutely nonsensical reason, you better reapply while your other application is still pending.

It doesn’t make sense. And if someone told me this as a client, I would think they were scamming me. Even as an immigration attorney, I would have doubted this set-up just a year ago.

And that’s what makes it so easy for immigrants to get scammed these days. There’s literally no way to verify this information without being “in the know.” And often, what I tell people is either something completely confusing and illogical like this, or that they are probably going to lose their case (especially if detained). So when a scammer comes along, claims to be an attorney (or judge, or prosecutor), and has a simple straightforward solution - people are willing to pay for that. We’ve heard from families who have lost $7k, $12k, $5k to scammers since the start of this administration.

Thanks for joining me in today’s episode of Depressing Detention Stories! More coming soon, maybe.

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My garden has been a labor of love (and heartbreak) for 15 years. It is my claim to a connection with nature, to environmentalism (belied by the plastic bags of soil amendments), to my children’s knowledge of the Earth.

I need to repot my plants, or transfer some of them outside. I’m afraid I’ll lose them, like some of the leafy greens I risked with a hopeful, too early transplant. But gardening requires persistence and setting aside perfectionism. The acceptance of failure and willingness to press forward, make adjustments, and understand that those changes may or may not work better than last time. It feels like creativity, because it is the growth of beauty. But in fact, it’s more method than art.

The year I birthed my first child, a hail storm cut down some of my tomato plants, and the squirrels finished off every bit of fruit. My father came over while I nested and constructed a cage made of green plastic fencing so that I could perhaps achieve my dream of producing enough to can, a practice I had picked up a few years prior. A practice that, like the garden, represented so much to me - commitment to locally grown produce, environmentalism, subsidiarity, self-sufficiency. A practice that, even when it meant this much, was almost always a disappointment, with 8 people-hours of work producing just a dozen quart jars of diced tomatoes.

In the end, the squirrels ate through the plastic fencing and continued their campaign of destruction. I was too tired out by my newborn to can tomatoes, anyway.

Several years later, I decided to grow my plants from seed, rather than spending the money on seedlings. With investments in a grow light and a heat mat, they stretched upwards as expected, my tiny seed babies slowly maturing along the same timeline as the tiny real baby I had learned was in my womb.

During Lent, with a month still to go till last-frost date, I started bringing the seeds out on nice-enough days to harden off. But while I didn’t lack in romanticism, perhaps I can blame my first trimester exhaustion for the fact that I left them outside on the night of a frost. Every single one wilted, died. As did, within days, the babe in my belly.

I avoided starting seeds for years afterwards. But this year, I broke out the grow light and heat pad. I’ve successfully brought out the trays to harden off, and I’ve remembered to bring them inside thus far. I planted a couple plugs of greens outside too early. But I haven’t despaired, and I haven’t failed. I press onward, day by day, plugging in the grow light, watering as needed, offering a pinch of fertilizer from time to time. I monitor the forecast and planting guides so I can dream of the day they will make it into the ground, hopefully destined to thrive.

But even if they make it to that point, there are still squirrels in waiting.

I share to recontextualize this season. Spring, blooms, Easter - they all speak of hope to those who do not labor. But I do not feel hope. For many people throughout history, and still today, the changing seasons have not offered relief from the oppression they faced.

I share to remind myself that this lack of hope, like my gardening efforts, is not a failure. Hope is not a required outcome of spring blooms. For a farmer, I suspect the season is one of work, planning to accommodate rain and planting schedules, worry combined with the hope that this year’s harvest will be plentiful. Strong seedlings bode well, but the challenges do not end upon planting them in the ground.

But I press on. Over the years, I have learned that garlic, kale, and herbs consistently grow well in my garden. The neighbor’s blackberry brambles crossed the fence line, and I’ve allowed them to spread through one of my beds. I’ve switched to cherry tomatoes, since there are usually enough to share between the squirrels and my children.

So, too, we press on in the public sphere. Crying out for peace. Demanding justice for those imprisoned. Seeking liberty for those afraid to leave their homes.

I want the long arc towards justice to be smooth, with steady progress towards our goal. But not every seed flourishes. Not every seedling survives. I lose some of my cases, and my clients are deported, their families shattered. I return again and again, determined. Because even when the crops fail, I’d rather be wielding a pruning hook than a spear.

But camp is only 6 hours a day, so my daughter and I managed to fit in fun trips after camp was over - a kids’ makerspace, the botanical gardens, and her grandparents took her to the zoo. We squeezed in some fun.

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And my work week ended up far happier than I feared it would. A client with a procedurally complicated case had an ICE check-in, and we feared she would be detained. But after three excruciating hours in the tiny waiting area, we walked back out together into the warm spring sun.

In the office, we saw people get their next report date and leave. We saw others get taken back, and they didn’t reemerge. The adults in the office all understood, and the anxiety, as always, thickened the air.

But there were two five-year-olds who were too short to reach the haze of adult concern lingering in the air, and their light pierced the fog. I made one of the kids a paper airplane. By the time we left, there were 5 paper airplanes and an origami boat. I often don’t get much cell service in the ICE office, but on Friday even the internet was rooting for us, giving me enough access to pull up origami instructions when one of the girls shyly asked for un barco.

As folded papers brought delight to the little ones, I wondered whether we could stage some sort of resistance, a revolution of delight even in that offensive place. Of course, the specter of detention and its corollary - deportation - wasn’t entirely banished by the paper boat riding the carpeted waves.

But we refused to be diminished, even within that limbo. On top of the fear, people are often treated with rudeness and disdain - by the security guards, the receptionist, and the officers themselves. Rather than bow our heads, we smiled at the children in our midst, at their freedom, at our insistence on existence, even there. The children proclaimed their belief that an airplane or boat can carry us wherever we want to go, borders be damned.

And now for the assignment: Have you ever written a “public comment” on a proposed federal “rule”? There’s no time like the present to get started! There are two proposed rules that would significantly affect immigrants.

1. The first would almost entirely eliminate their right to appeal, which is especially harmful now as the “laws” are interpreted and applied in more restrictive ways than ever before. Learn how to comment on this rule here.
   

2. The other proposed rule would severely limit access to work authorization for asylum seekers. How do we expect people to survive if they aren’t supposed to work? The “informal” labor market breeds abuse, as those working “under the table” feel they can’t complain about mistreatment and underpayment. Learn how to comment on this rule here.

Writing a comment is as easy - or maybe even easier? - than writing to your lawmakers. Give it a try!

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https://www.afterdinnerconversation.com/

libbyapp.com (you can probably access this through your library!)

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On an evening as beautiful as this, we try to forget. But those clients are still here with us. Every night when I go to bed, I wonder at the privilege of it – my warm, comfortable bed, my home with my children right down the hall. While my clients are sleeping in a room where they never turn out the lights, sometimes sleeping on the ground because there aren’t enough bunks, wondering if our legal system will follow through on its promises, or if they will be deported.

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Things that make me angry, even when we win:

A detained client won her case, which resulted in her obtaining lawful permanent resident status (a green card). This is the email I received with the judge’s order granting her case. Every time they send out a notice now, they also attach instructions on how to “self deport” - even after you have won. Yet another indication that this isn’t about doing things the “right way” - it’s racism and trying to get people out of this country, plain and simple.

We laugh so we don’t cry:

A couple weeks ago, I wore a mask for a WebEx hearing with the immigration court. When the judge saw me, he joked, “Are you going to rob a bank after this?”

I smiled beneath my mask and responded, “No, your honor. I’m auditioning to join ICE’s enforcement operations.”

No, not really. I’m not that quick on my feet. I just chuckled and told him I was sick.

Quotes I liked:

“The Bible begins with the declaration that every human being is created in the image and likeness of God. That dignity does not fluctuate with citizenship, documentation, language, or national origin,” said Rev. Taylor Lewis Guthrie Hartman, pastor of First Presbyterian Church.

Another quote, this time from the Eastern District of NY: “unquestionably, the laws of human decency condemn such villainy.”

An article I keep thinking about:

Rebecca Nagle:

“While I agree with the moral conviction behind “no one is illegal on stolen land,” legally, it’s wrong. In fact, the opposite is true. It is because the land is stolen that the U.S. government is able to decide whose presence is legal or not. It is the reason our immigration policies are so inhumane. What the U.S. did to Native Americans became the blueprint for how we treat those pushed to the edge of our democracy.”

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The “right way” to immigrate barely exists. It’s hanging on by a thread. And the number of people who can manage that tightrope are far and few between.

The problem with trying to explain this is that people don’t believe facts, and this type of information is boring.

Correctly navigating our immigration system is very similar to tax law. Both are considered “administrative” law, heavily based on huge statutory texts (laws passed by congress). Sure, you can do your taxes without an accountant or tax-preparer. But there’s a good chance you’re not actually doing all of it correctly. Should we say that anyone who has made a mistake - or who has chosen to present their finances in a way that perhaps unfairly maximizes their return - is “illegal”?

Limited paths to immigrate the “right way”

Earlier in my career, I talked at least once or twice a year to high schoolers - often Spanish classes. Before I made them take the Naturalization Civics exam in Spanish, we talked about the ways to obtain legal status in the United States. They always answered: pay money, learn English, and take a test.

Nope. There are only 3 main pathways: (1) have an immediate family member who is a US citizen or green card holder; (2) have an employer who can show that there is no US citizen willing or able to perform your job (high-skilled, typically); or (3) fall into a few narrow humanitarian categories.

That leaves out a lot of people.

And it’s ridiculous to have political debates when people have such a fundamental misunderstanding of reality.

Trump’s decimation of existing paths

Trump initially claimed that he was okay with “legal” immigration, but his actions have shown otherwise. He has cancelled all refugee admissions, and he is calling for reexamination of people who were legally admitted through the refugee process. He has decimated the asylum system. Taken away Temporary Protected Status and Parole statuses (not permanent, but legitimate temporary statuses). Gone after people here on student visas. Begun deporting people with pending cases. Detained people who were literally moments away from obtaining a green card (immigrants at adjustment interviews whose cases could have been approved). The list goes on and on.

Existing paths perpetuate bias and incorrect assumptions

People who enter with a visitor visa (or many other types of temporary visas) are given a period of “authorized stay.” If they “overstay” that amount of time, they are undocumented, just like those who enter the country without documentation.

But their options differ tremendously. Consider the following paths:

Option 1:

• Enter with visa

• Overstay visa

• Give birth to US citizen child

• When child turns 21, file a “one-step” petition with child’s petition for parent and parent’s application for a green card, usually processed in about a year.

Option 2:

• Cross border without documentation

• Give birth to US citizen child

• Remain in the United States for more than 1 year

• When child turns 21: you are not eligible for a green card. You need a “waiver” of your unlawful presence. For the waiver, you need a “qualifying relative.” The only options for this waiver are a US citizen parent or spouse of the immigrant. Your US citizen child doesn’t count. [There are of course some special situations, but these are based on obscure procedural issues (245i, etc.), not “merit.”]

If you replace a US citizen child in the above scenarios with marrying a US citizen spouse: Visa overstay can file a one-step petition and get their green card in usually less than 1 year. For the person who crossed the border without inspection, there’s a 4-step process that currently takes at least 5 years and requires a trip back to the country of origin.

This is one of many examples of the ways that our system is prejudiced towards people with money, because it’s easier to get a visa if you have substantial funds in the bank, a good job, own property, etc. The government believes you when you say you’re not planning to stay in the United States.

Doing it the “right way” and still subject to detention and deportation

Under Biden, many people jumped through incredible hoops to enter the United States legally and obtain a temporary status (usually parole). Many of them then applied for asylum, as expected under the conditions of their entry. But when Trump rescinded their parole status, many were detained. With limited access to attorneys and the many changes in immigration policy, this has often led to deportation.

Or take another common situation: Someone enters the United States and ICE gives them a Notice to Appear (NTA). But ICE never files the NTA with the immigration court - their own choice/mistake. As a result, the individual is not scheduled for court and files their asylum application with the asylum office (not the immigration court). They regularly attend ICE check-ins. But now, under a new policy, ICE (at least in St. Louis) will re-NTA them and detain them at their next check-in. Because even though it was ICE’s fault to begin with, and the immigrant has been nothing but diligent and compliant, the new policy is to detain someone any time ICE issues an NTA.

Maybe my own descriptions are not convincing, but there are plenty of articles describing this break in the social contract, where people have done everything “right” (despite the challenges to doing so that are described above) and are still being detained and deported. Here’s just one example.

So what?

Now I’ve written a long post that most probably won’t bother to even finish. So how do we convince people that we need to all actually understand the system? Do we need to understand it? I truly believe that if we want to create a better system, the answer is yes. But I get it - people care about people, not policy. Stories, not statistics.

I’ll try to give you some stories next time. For now, make sure to suit up before you venture into any comment sections - both with facts and with a great deal of courage and compassion.

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This week I had conversations with multiple friends about this very thing. A message from a teacher that felt demeaning. How a church can show that it is truly welcoming to all. When a colleague can express herself imperfectly without causing offense.

It always feels existential. Even the most micro-issue takes on macro consequences: how is my identity perceived in this environment? What does that say about me, and what does it say about my environment?

Much of the time, we are all navigating these questions together, bumping into each other and creating boundaries whether or not that is our intention.

Other times, the lines are more determinedly drawn.

Those doing the drawing are, at least sometimes, motivated by the purpose of preserving their values. A church has certain tenets by which members must abide. A school has certain standards. Friends have boundaries.

When it comes to a country, are the lines drawn clearly and with intention? By whom?

Asylum law has grappled fiercely with the situation of abused women seeking shelter in the United States. Is this a category that we protect? For a period of years, the answer was yes - if the man abusing them saw the woman as his property.

It’s Valentine’s Day weekend, so perhaps you’ve eaten a conversation heart recently. Ur mine, or maybe I’m yours. When does “you’re my love/partner/soulmate” cross over into “I own you”? Can we belong to someone without being possessed by them?

When it comes to the country, can we feel that we belong without expecting it to belong to us? When did we begin to believe that our own belonging gives us the right to possess and control the nation, and everyone within it?

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Abolition is a full-fledged movement, and if you think you can write it off as nonsensical, I encourage you to read and learn more before you make up your mind.

Immigration detention is easy to distinguish because its purpose is civil, not criminal. It’s an easy binary that makes the abolition argument more palatable, while reinforcing the role of the prison industrial complex. As usual, any easy binary is likely faulty.

I hope that what I share contributes to the conversation by demonstrating how cruel it is to cage people, regardless of the context.

When my client was released last Friday, I wanted a break from detained cases. They move at a much faster pace, with far more immediate consequences, than non-detained cases. I told myself I need to pace myself, to catch up on other work, to rest.

Those are all worthy wishes, perhaps. But what I really wanted was to forget for a while.

Engaging with the detention system makes the cruelty impossible to ignore. In Missouri, ICE detention takes place at local county jails. Each one is slightly different, but here are some of the my clients have have suffered while being caged:

• strip searches

• strip and cavity searches

• assault (by other people who are detained, guards, and/or ICE agents during the arrest)

• lights kept on all night long

• sleeping on the ground because there were five people in a cell with only 4 beds (2 bunks)

• having access only to a nurse, not a doctor

• being called racist slurs

• not being allowed to gather in a group to pray

• It was freezing cold in the jail, and the only shirts available to buy in commissary were size 6x.

• One person told me they knew they would never get back these months they had spent detained, watching their baby grow older on a video screen.

You might think that someone who had recently been released from this suffering might also want to forget about it, but my client did not. She continued connecting me with the women that she knew from the jail, asking me to please review their cases. She did the same while she was in the jail, so much so that I told her she was like a social worker there.

And as my list grew, so did the weight of the suffering. It’s one thing to know that on any given day, about 400 people in Missouri are in cages because of ICE. It’s another thing to start learning their names. To hear from their friends and family. To speak with them.

One of the families that she connected me with told me, “we have a 5-year-old child, and every day they go look out the window to see if mom is going to get home.”

I’ve debated over whether or not to share this story, because it’s uncomfortably close to “poverty porn.” Except this is detention-suffering-porn. But this is not a time to sanitize suffering, and the family gave me permission to share. They hope that if others hear how ICE is devastating families, people will rise up to stop it.

Will we?

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For one, there was a national shutdown. You might not have even heard about it, so I’m not going to claim that it was a total success. Plenty of businesses didn’t even acknowledge the day, and I have no sense of how much of the public participated. But. Plenty of businesses DID participate, either by closing, or by donating profits to support immigrants. We have room to grow. And there was also a feeling of momentum that cannot be ignored.

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Along these lines - because today felt big, I am scared that it will be the pinnacle, and people will begin to lose interest. Please stay engaged. Did you participate today? Awesome, but you’re not finished. Talk to your friends about why you joined the shutdown. Recruit people to join you next time. Plug in to community defense and immigrant support in your neighborhood. Don’t let the news cycle distract you from this issue, even if it falls off the front page.

Second: my client won and was released from detention!!!!

This does NOT mean that the system is working. This case was truly ridiculous, and she should have gotten out a month ago, or even before that.

But today is still a day for celebration. I honestly can’t remember ever being this excited about winning a case. I am so so happy for her and her family. I’ve been giddy/on the edge of happy-crying about it all day. A lovely volunteer org arranged a ride home for her, since the detention centers/jails are always far away from where people actually live. So much love and happiness and joy.

We’re still winning. Even amidst the awfulness. The volume is way too high. I talked with two other people detained by ICE just today, and they both need attorneys. I got calls from a couple more people. I can’t represent them all, and even if I could, I couldn’t win all of these cases. The government has manipulated the law such that it is stacked against us in every single way.

But even in the arid cracks, a seed will still sprout. We will keep planting and building, and eventually that tree will grow strong enough to split the wall in which it is rooted.

Help us water and fertilize the movement. Don’t forget about those behind bars at the whim of this administration. Find a way to take action. To tear down walls.

**

And, because let’s not promote the silly social media vision of a perfect world, here’s your glimpse into my very different feelings after we finished this client’s hearing. She was released today, but the hearing took place last week.

I just got out of court. We won, kind of. But I want to cry.

The judge granted my client’s case, but the government attorney reserved appeal. That means my client has to remain detained, for now. The government attorney - who is like a prosecutor - has up to 30 days to file their appeal. If they do, my client must remain detained for the entire appeal process, which is taking 6-12 months. I don’t *think* the government will appeal. But they have the power to keep her detained, even after she won.

It’s extra painful in this case, because it should have been an easy win. But there is never an easy win any more. Especially not for someone who is detained, regardless of how strong the case is.

And because it’s so unfair, and all of the power is so unevenly weighted towards the government and deportation, it’s hard for me to celebrate - even when we win. My client isn’t celebrating tonight. She’s waiting with her fingers crossed, waiting to see whether she’ll be stuck in jail for up to a year more while dealing with extremely sympathetic/humanitarian issues. And there’s nothing either of us can do about it.

{Reminder, if you’re skimming, that this was a week and a half ago. Tonight she IS celebrating, as am I. <3 }