Learning How to Be an Immigrant Advocate: A Student Attorney’s Perspective
By Courtney Lee[1]
Appreciating the Immigrant Experience
We had done just about everything to prepare for trial, down to planning our seating arrangement. My co-counsel and fellow legal intern, Maggie DaRocha, was to my left, and our supervisor, Claudia Cubas, on my right. But when an Arabic translator appeared and took her seat at the front of the courtroom, Maggie and I turned to each other, perplexed. This was because Abdi[2], our client, spoke and understood English. More importantly, we had planned for the entire trial to be conducted in English. Nerves ran high, so any deviation from the plan seemed disastrous.
This is not the courtroom you hear about in school or watch on TV. This is Immigration Court. The room is small. There is no jury. No crowd of spectators. No boisterous, “Law & Order” lawyering from either side. And certainly no dramatic background music. Most of the time, the immigrant party whose case is before the Court—whose foreseeable future is being determined at that proceeding—is not even in the room. Instead, detained immigrants appear on a video screen.
Abdi waved to us from the video screen, and I wanted to signal to him that he was about to be asked to speak a language from a land he had not known for over 25 years. As it turned out, my worries were misplaced. Despite the added curveball, Abdi voiced himself clearly, cooperated with the judge’s requests, and even informed the Court that he preferred to speak English. In that moment, I found solace in Abdi’s ability to respond to change with determination and resolve. Indeed, his response characterizes the immigrant experience.
Documenting a Lifetime
Representing Abdi in court was but a small piece of the work we provided as his legal counsel. Over the course of three weeks, we ran around the D.C. area speaking with dozens of Abdi’s former employers, friends, and family contacts as well as collecting records, affidavits, and other supporting evidence. The process was in no way easy or convenient or efficient. Even as I stayed late at the office to finish my work, I reminded myself that I was lucky.
An immigration lawyer is expected to document a lifetime of memories into a cohesive piece, with just the right amounts of ethos, pathos, and logos to persuade a judge to give his or her client a second chance. And yet, our laws demand the same from an unrepresented person who is likely unaware of the complexities of our legal system, may not speak English fluently, and who is in detention in the lead up to trial—physically and psychologically isolated from the rest of society. Imagine, a detained immigrant without representation, without access to phones or family members to help gather evidence in support of his or her case. This situation is all too common given the rise of private detention and the immigration-industrial complex.
The culmination of all our hard work was a nearly 400 page, multi-tabbed record. And while I am proud of our efforts, I wish I could say that that type of representation was the norm. In reality, tens of thousands of indigent immigrants move through our immigration system each year without quality representation, or without any representation at all.[3]
Always Looking Forward
Abdi was born in Somalia, lawfully entered the U.S. in 1988, and has lived here ever since. Despite suffering from a severe mental illness, long-standing drug addiction, and homelessness, Abdi is a good, decent man in every sense of the words. He is the type of man whose old friends and family could sing his praises for hours on the phone. His physical and mental disposition made it difficult for him to find work or be proud of himself for much of his life, but he was always looking forward to a better tomorrow. And he never gave up.
The Department of Homeland Security and Immigration Judge both agreed that Abdi deserved to stay in the U.S., and, as was ordered by the judge, Abdi checked himself into rehab shortly after the trial. “No matter what happens,” he said to us, “everything is going to be okay.” And he’s right. It is his tenacity and will to survive that inspires me to take the lessons I’ve learned from him and become a better advocate for others like him. Thank you, Abdi. And thank you to the brilliant, forward-looking advocates at CAIR Coalition for the opportunity to work alongside you on behalf of those who need it most.
[1] Courtney Lee was a 2014 summer legal intern with CAIR Coalition.
[2] Name changed to protect his identity.
[3] U.S. Department of Justice Executive Office for Immigration Review, FY 2013 Statistics Yearbook (April 2014) http://www.justice.gov/eoir/statspub/fy13syb.pdf.
