As someone who has practiced and taught immigration law exclusively in the interior of the United States, the border wall at the U.S.-Mexico border is a jarring sight. While immigrants throughout the United States face unjust policies that operate as “invisible walls,” the physical walls, barbed wire, patrol cars, and cameras at the border that divide and surveil, drive home—in a very visual way—the inhumanity of these policies. In late October, I had the opportunity to join colleagues from the ABA's Commission on Immigration to visit the ABA's Immigration Justice Project (“IJP”) in San Diego and participate in their work at the border. We had the opportunity to witness the IJP staff, their clients, and partners breaking down the injustices that divide families and communities—just like the powerful waves that erode the border wall jutting into the sea.
We spent the beginning of our trip at the IJP offices learning about the IJP's staff and their critical work supporting immigrants in San Diego and surrounding areas. The IJP provides life-saving and empowering direct representation to immigrants detained at the nearby Otay Mesa Detention Center (OMDC), including immigrants who have been adjudicated mentally incompetent as part of the National Qualified Representative Program. IJP’s work includes a universal, merits-blind representation program for people who are indigent and detained or under custody, funded through San Diego County. Through the Legal Orientation Program, they also provide know-your-rights presentations and individual orientation sessions with unrepresented people detained at OMDC to arm them with the information and tools to represent themselves in court. Finally, the IJP's robust pro bono program recruits, trains, and mentors volunteer attorneys to expand access to justice and due process for immigrants in the area.
We then had the chance to handle pro bono IJP cases of our own—preparing parole requests alongside asylum seekers detained at OMDC. Because many in our group had not represented detained clients, IJP staff first provided a comprehensive, practical training on how to prepare an effective parole request. We then received our client assignments and traveled to OMDC to meet with our clients. Our clients told us, through volunteer interpreters as necessary, about the terrifying experiences that pushed them out of their home countries as well as their harrowing journeys to the U.S. border. They told us about their loved ones in the United States that they hoped to see soon. When not meeting with clients, some members of our group also performed screenings for detained people seeking legal representation and protection in the U.S.