MoProBono Fall 2018 Newsletter

7 MoProBono Fall 2018 slow when it comes down to effecting these reunifications. I spoke at length to ICE and to other bureaucrats to try and push the reunification forward, but they find ways to pass responsibility off to someone else,” he says, echoing Alexis’s frustration. While Julian was in El Paso, supervising attorney Ruti Smithline attended an immigration court hearing for the child in New York and made contact with the legal services organization that was assisting the child. On October 5, after weeks of Julian’s tenacious advocacy—the legal services organization fondly described him as a “zealous and kind mosquito”—Julian’s and Ruti’s clients were reunited and the two are now living in Tennessee. Counseling Detainees Not all of the MoFo attorneys who have taken on pro bono work with detainees have worked with individual clients. For example, Erica Richards, N.Y.-based counsel in the Restructuring and Insolvency Group, spent a week in June assisting individuals at an immigration detention center in a rural Georgia town. “I was inspired by a presentation given at MoFo by the Immigration Justice Campaign and the Southern Poverty Law Center,” says Erica. “The presentation was in February, long before family separation was even an issue.” (The Morrison & Foerster Foundation helped to kick-start the Campaign with a donation of $10,000 in early 2017.) Erica helped Southern Poverty Law Center staff attorneys with screening, initial intake, and motion drafting for bonds. Getting out on bond, Erica explains, can go a long way toward helping a detainee prevail on his or her immigration application. “If they’re out on bond, they can work, make connections, look for an attorney (or help their attorney if they are lucky enough to have counsel), and do all the things that would support their application,” she explains. New York attorneys Chanwoo Park, Max Zidel, and Katie Viggiani prepared immigrant detainees at the Albany (N.Y.) County Correctional Facility for their CFIs with supervision from MoFo partner Jamie Levitt. Their efforts came about as a result of the Department of Homeland Security’s transfer of over 300 immigrant detainees from federal detention facilities at the U.S. border to the Albany County Correctional Facility. Most of the detainees were subject to the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy of criminally prosecuting anyone who enters the United States other than at border checkpoints, and some of the detainees are parents whose children were separated from them while they await criminal prosecution. In August, San Francisco associate Justin Fisch went down to El Paso, where he spent approximately 10 days meeting with about 40 parents to gather information that would help other pro bono lawyers individually represent those parents. Justin also prepared some of the detainees for possible CFI interviews. After being released, one of the parents with whom Justin worked said Justin’s visits had given him strength during his detention. Justin relayed a heartbreaking story from one of the Guatemalan detainees he counseled. “His daughter, who was four years old and can’t speak a word of Spanish—she spoke a Mayan language called Q’anjob’al—had been detained for three months at a place in Phoenix, Arizona, where nobody spoke her language. Just imagine that.” Justin observed, “The long-term repercussions of this policy remain to be seen.” The work continues. Interested lawyers should contact Senior Pro Bono Counsel Jennifer Brown to get involved.