During the first Trump administration, I learned about the immigration legal system—first, as an interpreter and advocate for asylum applicants, then as a court observer, and finally as a communications staffer at an immigration legal-services provider. I learned the acronyms and the names of forms, learned what made one asylum claim stronger than another, learned enough to become outraged when a new executive rule had violated existing law and precedent in some way. I believed that laws would help set people free—and I watched it happen, over and over again. People winning cases, getting work permits and visas; attorneys grinning as they handed over the envelopes with brand new green cards; people crying with relief.
I also was able to see all the ways in which the system was fundamentally unjust—the ways in which it allowed people to be hurt, to be denied the help they needed. I saw illegal actions carried out by the government, yes: the aftermath of family separations, applications denied because every single box on a form didn’t contain at least an “N/A,” illegal traffic stops. I also saw actions that were totally legal and no less devastating. Parents who lost custody of their kids after their stay in immigration detention was lengthened by their inability to pay a bond. People deported and sent away from their families and loved ones. People who weren’t eligible for asylum because they experienced violence and fear in the wrong kinds of ways.
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