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    September 23, 2024 Top Legal News of the Week

    ABA leaders visit ProBAR project in Texas

    The spotlight was on the Rio Grande Valley when ABA leaders recently visited the association’s largest immigration project: the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project in Harlingen, Texas, better known as ProBAR.

    A migrant couple wait to meet with ABA ProBAR staff at the Access to Work Clinic in Harlingen, Texas.

    A migrant couple wait to meet with ABA ProBAR staff at the Access to Work Clinic in Harlingen, Texas.

    American Bar Association photo

    With nearly 300 employees, including 46 staff lawyers, ProBAR is one of the largest providers of free legal services for detained migrant children in the United States. It helps children in 28 shelters across the valley and assists adults in two detention centers in southern Texas, near Brownsville and South Padre Island. So far this year, staff members have assessed cases of more than 14,000 children.

    ABA Executive Director Alpha Brady and other ABA leaders from Chicago and Washington, D.C., visited ProBAR the week of Sept. 9 to get a firsthand look at how the ABA helps vulnerable people navigate the complex American immigration system.

    “The dedication and hard work of our immigration staff in Texas and California is inspiring. They exemplify the ABA’s mission to pursue justice for everyone, and I am very proud of what they accomplish,” Brady said.

    The trip included visits to a local immigration court, a children’s shelter, an emergency shelter for men, women and families, and ProBAR offices in Harlingen and Houston. The leaders also visited the ABA Children’s Immigration Law Academy in Houston, which provides training and support for lawyers who represent children in the immigration process.

    ProBAR, which recently celebrated its 35th anniversary, also supports nondetained people facing removal proceedings before the U.S. Immigration Court in Harlingen. In addition, a ProBAR office in Houston, which opened last year, provides representation to people facing removal proceedings in the Houston metro area after their release from federal custody in the Rio Grande Valley.

    The project, part of the ABA Commission on Immigration, was founded in 1989, when the Texas border was in crisis, with thousands of refugees fleeing wars in Central America, seeking asylum in the United States. Today, ProBAR helps thousands of men, women and children every year who are fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries.

    In January, ProBAR began a program called Access to Work, in which staffers help migrants complete applications for employment authorization documents shortly after being paroled into the United States. So far, they have assisted more than 3,600 individuals apply for work permits so they can support themselves and their families as they seek asylum in the United States.

    The program, partly funded by the Jones Day Foundation, operates in coordination with the City of Brownsville and the Good Neighbor Settlement House. Recently, ProBAR and the immigration commission hosted a pro bono trip with DLA Piper and Microsoft to complete applications and review how to streamline the application process. 

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