May 2026

This month I spent a lot of time trying to assist a young Peruvian client apply for SIJS– Special Immigrant Juvenile Status– before a draconian rule went into effect. SIJS is a unique status for youth under the age of 21 who has been abandoned, abused, or neglected by either one or both parents, and for whom returning back to their home country is not advisable. SIJS is a wonderful option for children who either came to the United States alone or have a parent who is unsuitable as a guardian, and who find someone who can be a guardian for them. Youth with SIJS can apply for permanent residency, and while they’re on the waitlist for SIJS, they traditionally can get “deferred action,” or protection from removal.

All of that changed May 10. The government filed a new policy saying that effective May 10, individuals who applied for SIJS and who are on the waitlist would no longer be automatically considered for deferred action. That puts many of our prospective clients in limbo, because the SIJS waitlist is several years long. It put one of our clients in particular limbo because we were in the process of applying for SIJS but hadn’t yet found a guardian. Another lawyer and I tried our best to find a guardian for our 19 year old Peruvian client (who has been living in a shelter), so we could apply for SIJS before the May 10th deadline. But we were not able to find a guardian in time, and we missed the May 10 deadline.

The silver lining from this is that we found many people willing to help and pitch in when we thought there was a chance that we’d make the May 10th deadline. Volunteers from other organizations were going to open the doors, work extra hours, and share expertise to help us advocate for this client. I learned a lot about the SIJS process, and we will be in good shape to file for SIJS, even if our client won’t be automatically considered for deferred action.

Besides working on the SIJS case, I prepared another U visa application for a beloved client who escaped domestic violence in Ecuador only to be attacked by the same man in Chicago. She has been an inspiration to me of breaking the cycle of violence and persevering against all odds. I file the application in late May, and it might be the thing I am most proud of yet.

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April 2026

After the whirlwind of filing the asylum applications for the family of 6 was over, I got to work on some other cases. First, I filed a motion to sever for a client in divorce proceedings. This client came to the United States as an asylum seeker and listed her husband and daughter as derivatives on her asylum application, which means that if she received asylum, they would too. However, her husband became abusive in the United States and my client and her husband are in divorce proceedings. Now, he is arguing that he should receive custody of their child because only he is working. At this point, he can afford a lawyer, and our client is representing herself.

After hearing this, my team and I decided to file a motion to sever my client’s (and her daughter’s) application from that of her estranged husband. Because his asylum claim will be disconnected from hers, he will have to file his own asylum claim. That may result in him losing his work permit, which would undercut his argument that only he can care for the daughter.

We haven’t heard back yet, but I have mixed feelings about filing the motion to sever. Yes, I want to separate my client’s case from that of her husband’s. But I feel uncomfortable about what feels like a violent act. I get that to advocate for my client, I may have to disadvantage another person. That is the nature of litigation. But severing his asylum application may mean that he has to rely on a weaker asylum claim and go back to a country that he genuinely fears returning to. And that doesn’t feel great.

Besides filing the motion to sever, I worked on three detained intakes in a row. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do to provide these people with assistance. But at least I listened and told them what I could.

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March 2026

This time I cut my teeth with a new (to me) immigration matter, asylum. A few months ago, my colleagues and I attended a Master Calendar Hearing (the first hearing in a removal proceeding) for a couple with four young kids, two of whom have severe medical needs. We asked the judge for more time to supplement their asylum applications, which at that point were so bare-boned that we feared the government would move to deport them early through a practice known as pretermission. Asylum law is notoriously complex, and achieving asylum is even harder, so I had my work cut out for me in fighting the odds against these clients’ deportation.

And as if learning about asylum wasn’t hard enough, I learned another lesson the hard way: the difficulties of working with overwhelmed clients. The clients blew through my deadlines, didn’t answer my questions, and would ghost calls that we set up (often during my free hours in the evenings). I found myself growing exasperated, tired, and even resentful as the days until their next removal hearing dwindled and I couldn’t do my job. I then attended a follow-up training on trauma-informed interviewing, which gave me needed perspective. I realized: 1. Although their immigration case was important to them, it was not the only urgent matter on their hands. In trying to feed four kids, pay the bills, and take care of two medically-demanding children, my clients often didn’t have energy to think beyond their most pressing emergency. 2. Framing the importance of tasks was vital. If I had taken even 5-10 more minutes at the outset to explain why the asylum applications were so important, I think I would have saved a lot of time. 3. While seemingly rough, deadlines can actually be helpful to both the client and attorney. If I had set earlier deadlines with my clients and had been firmer with them, I don’t think I would have been working so close to the deadline, to both their (and my) chagrin. These are the important lessons of public interest work.

I wish I could say that all my work paid off, but the judge moved up their next removal hearing; now they only have three months to prepare for their final hearing before they could get deported. And therein was my third lesson of the month: I’m not always going to win for my clients. I still may have improved their chances of obtaining asylum, but in this environment, the chances of full success are low. I’m not giving up yet, and I’m doing what I can. Hopefully next month I’ll have some more success stories to share.

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February 2026

I’m halfway through month five of my fellowship and the rules keep changing just as I start learning them. The past two team meetings have focused on several changes in the legal landscape, both of which are hair-raisingly alarming. The first is that starting March 9, 2026, the DOJ is truncating the time to appeal an immigration judge’s decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) from 30 days to 10 days. In effect, many people are going to miss the opportunity to appeal and be ordered removed. My team spent a while discussing how, when we receive a bad decision from an immigration judge, we could move our engine fast enough to decide to appeal, outline a full argument, and file an appeal in such a short time. That seems hard.

But what is worse is that appeals will no longer automatically receive a full review. Now the BIA must convene and vote to review a case before it can be heard. Unless a majority of permanent BIA members vote in favor, the appeal will be dismissed. This effectively distinguishes due process. The only corollary I can think of is in the federal habeas space, where prisoners who wish to appeal the denial of their habeas petitions must obtain certificates of appealability from a panel of judges before having their case heard before the court of appeals. But even there the process is (slightly) more justified: in the case of a state prisoner, for example, his case would have been heard by a trial court, appellate court, state supreme court (if available), the Supreme Court (potentially), and the federal district court before coming to the court of appeals. In that scenario, the person would have had many opportunities to be heard. But what about here? What is the interest other than silencing the voices of the oppressed? And saving resources is not enough. If the government were truly concerned about that, it could spend some of the $15 billion allocated for immigration detention each year to move faster on appeals.

A second (and proposed) change is that employment authorization permits for asylum seekers (EADs) may effectively disappear. Among other draconian changes, USCIS will pause granting new and renewed permits when the processing time for certain asylum applications exceeds 180 days. One of my supervisors quickly hopped on Google and learned that USCIS could take between 14 and 173 years to reach a 180-day processing time. The result is that if this proposed rule goes into effect, asylum seekers won’t be able to legally work in the United States. This is just another blow to asylum seekers, who now have to renew their work permits every 18 months (down from 5 years) and who have to pay over $500 each time.

Fortunately, EADs for U Visa applicants remain intact (for now). This month I worked on several applications for those, as well as several pro se asylum applications, motions for the court, and a VAWA application. By far my most valuable day this month was Legal Aid Chicago’s workshop on trauma-informed interviewing. As I’ve said before and will say again, the immigration system itself is traumatizing, and we can never stop learning how to be better advocates for our clients. I expect I’ll be having lots of trauma-informed conversations about the constant changes I’ve discussed thus far. Hopefully, this time, I’ll have some better tools.

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January 2026

This month, I completed my first ever U Visa application for a client. A U Visa (or a “Visa for U Nonimmigrant Status” as it is officially known), is a type of visa for victims of crimes who have been or are helpful to law enforcement in investigating and prosecuting specific crimes in the United States. It is an avenue for noncitizens to obtain lawful status in the United States for four years, and in the third year, the person can apply to be a legal permanent resident. What’s particularly wonderful for U Visas is that it waives certain parts of a noncitizen’s immigration history that would otherwise bar them from obtaining lawful status– in this case, it could waive my client’s entry into the United States with her kids without inspection. And U Visas allow clients to make lemonade out of the lemons they were served in life. What is trying about the U Visa process is that only 10,000 can be granted each year. There is a growing waitlist dating back from 2017, so it will take years before my client can receive relief.

In addition to filing this U Visa, I attended my client’s removal hearing to ask the court to move back her court date. I had managed to obtain a document certifying that this client had also been the victim of a crime, and I petitioned the court for more time to help with her U Visa and asylum application. To our delight, the judge granted our motion. I’m hoping that by the time she has her next hearing, her U Visa will be pending and we can ask for another continuance. That will be a small justice for this client, who fled her home country to escape her ex-partner, and whose ex-partner followed her and continued to terrorize her here.

Besides these small victories, the environment in immigration law is grim. I called a potential client to discuss a problem with her employment authorization application just to learn that her husband had been detained at an ICE check-in that morning. I spent much of the next few days trying to track down her husband as ICE transported him from Chicago to Indiana to Kentucky. We eventually connected him with a lawyer in Kentucky who was familiar with the immigration judges there and was willing to represent him. But almost three weeks have passed and he is still in detention. Although we no longer represent him, I have kept in touch with his family to stay updated on his case, and I feel their hope slipping.

But day by day I feel my skills as an immigration lawyer are improving. My spanish is stronger, I feel more confident with clients, and I am becoming more self-sufficient in my research and writing. I relish my time with clients and being a sympathetic voice in a hostile milieu. And Legal Aid Chicago is really starting to feel like home.

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December 2025

This past month has been slightly less eventful, if not less busy. After my work on the habeas petition was done, I started cutting my teeth on more of the day-to-day work of being an immigration advocate. I helped a client renew DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a policy started during the Obama Administration for certain immigrants brought into the United States as youth). I filed a motion to continue a client’s removal proceeding after receiving a necessary document to file a U-Visa application (a visa for victims of crime). And I worked on an asylum application on behalf of a boy whose mother is in removal proceedings but he is not.

One thing that I had not adequately anticipated was the trauma that an immigration advocate works with on a daily basis. I knew that people who come to the United States and seek legal services often come from traumatic backgrounds. I even knew that the immigration process itself is gruesome, to say the least. But I hadn’t appreciated how the reality of providing asylum or visas for survivors of domestic violence, crimes, or trafficking means that these clients have to relive their harrowing pasts just for the chance of receiving an immigration benefit. And in the ever-tightening belt of the current immigration system, often someone’s past trauma isn’t “enough” or the “right” kind of suffering to warrant relief.

This realization has spawned my discovery of even more truths: it is vital that an advocate in my circumstances be trauma-informed. Truth be told, I wish we had resources for a social worker to talk to my clients after almost every one of my calls. I have an incredible opportunity to practice the skills that I acquired as an intern, but I know I also have much more to learn. I have also gleaned that immigration law, at least the kind we practice, is inherently reactionary: something terrible happened to someone, so as a result, our country will give them legal status. It creates an almost perverse incentive scheme as an advocate: while I never want anything bad to have happened to a potential client, knowing that something may have makes it easier for me to represent them.

Next month will bring new challenges with writing U-visa applications and contending with removal hearings. I look forward to reporting what happens next.

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November 2025

This past month was a whirlwind. It started when I received a call out of the blue from the Assistant Director of my team, The Immigrant and Workers’ Rights Practice Group. When I answered the phone, she told me that she had just met the daughter of a seriously ill man detained at the ICE detention center in Broadview, Illinois. She asked, “Do you have time to file an emergency Habeas Petition ASAP?” I of course said yes. Over the next five hours the Director, Assistant Director, and I huddled together to write, edit, and submit a petition to prevent our client from being removed from the jurisdiction of the Seventh Circuit and released from custody.

That was just the beginning. As the days unfolded, we learned more about our client and the dangers of his continued custody. He had diabetes, liver cancer, and retinal neuropathy, to name only a few of his concerning health conditions. And the reason he was arrested? He was working at his job as a landscaper and picked up in an ICE raid..

After submitting the petition, we also learned more about the basis of his detention and how we had to challenge it. We learned that the government was holding him under a new USCIS policy that considers people who have been living in the United States for years—like our client—as “applicants for admission” who are “seeking admission” and thus subject to mandatory detention. We challenged the government’s policy as incorrect as a matter of law and amended our habeas petition to reflect that argument. Meanwhile, we ensured that our client was prepared for a possible bond hearing in case the judge ordered the government to provide him bond as judges had in similar situations.

This story has a happy ending: the judge granted our habeas petition and our client got out on bond. We met with his family the week after and they were able to convey their gratitude in person. As an advocate, it was an incredible outcome and I was so glad to have contributed so meaningfully to our mission in my second month of work. But I kept on thinking about the hundreds of people who were arrested in similar raids and didn’t have access to a lawyer— who signed voluntary removal orders and got deported. What could have happened if they could have talked to a lawyer? When will this end?

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October 2025

Ever since I learned what the concept was, I wanted to spend my life advancing human rights. In my first ever meeting with the Immigration Team, the subset of the Immigration and Workers’ Rights Practice Group at Legal Aid Chicago (and my colleagues for the next two years), I knew I was in the right place. As we sat, anxious as our nation’s attack on immigrants escalates and masked men brutally pluck our neighbors from the streets, our director urged us to continue doing what we are doing: restoring and uplifting the dignity of our clients. We are recognizing the humanity in our clients. We are making calls and making contingency plans. We are helping clients find relief in their day-to-day cases, just as we are training on how to support our clients if caught in detention. We are active in the crisis that surrounds us, and we keep a steady eye on what’s most important: the security and well-being of our client communities.

One supervisor joked that I was starting my job in the “middle of a hurricane.” That may be a good description for the energy thrumming through our office, but a description of my work should be far more modest. I’m taking baby steps as a new attorney, learning the ABCs of today’s immigration law and switching gears from clerking. As I find my sea legs, I’ve shadowed intakes, introduced myself to clients, and grown in appreciation of both the fortitude of our clients and the intensifying obstacles they face to gain relief. And with every stride, I get closer to seeing my future as a potential bridge for that divide, one that I hope will support and uplift every client I meet.

So, in summary, my first two weeks have engulfed me in a new world of challenge and never-ending hope. And there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.