Immigrant Advocates in a Rapidly Changing, Anti-Immigrant System: The Case of U.S. Immigration Attorneys

• In Event: 30254 - Professionall Legal Practices

Abstract

Immigration attorneys often provide humanitarian-based legal services––such as asylum, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, and Violence Against Women Act––out of a desire to advocate for vulnerable immigrants. However, these attorneys currently work within a highly politicized system that is rapidly changing and increasingly hostile toward immigrants––from 2016-2024, there have been an unprecedented 1,007 administrative changes to immigration policy, many of which have directly attacked humanitarian-based legal protections and subjected immigrants to legal precarity, detention, and deportation. This study asks: How do immigration attorneys respond to these policy changes which directly restrict their advocacy efforts? Do they adapt to these restrictions, resist them, or leave the field? And what implications does this have for immigrants' access to justice?

I draw on in-depth interviews with current and former immigration attorneys to answer these questions. Data collection is ongoing. To date, I have conducted 30 interviews (out of 60 planned interviews) with attorneys from three liberal states––California, Massachusetts, and New York––with 1-45 years of experience and former Immigration Judges, representing a diverse range of racial/ethnic backgrounds and immigration and trauma histories. Preliminary findings indicate that attorneys position themselves as up against an unjust system and, in response, resist such policies through intensifying legal advocacy and mitigating system harms through providing extra-legal services. The latter strategies involve expanding the definition of what it means to be an immigration attorney.

This study reveals how attorneys may perpetuate or challenge systems from within. It also has implications for the composition of the immigration attorney workforce, and, consequently, immigrants' ability to secure quality legal representation. Additionally, these findings may apply to how people in other "helping" professions—such as medicine, education, and social services—respond to and shape the systems in which they serve others.

Author

• Bernadette Blashill, Harvard University