The Plane is Still on Fire: The Urgency of Public Interest Law

By Teresa Smith:
2019 Pro Bono Public Award Winner

Each year, NALP confers the PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award, recognizing the significant contributions that law students make to underserved populations, the public interest community, and legal education by performing pro bono work.

NALP is proud to announce it conferred this year’s Pro Bono Publico Award on Teresa Smith, recent graduate of Lewis & Clark Law School. Teresa’s work lies at the intersection of farmworker rights, environmental law, and immigration law. Her efforts to date have included direct work with asylum clients in detention that, in the words of one supervisor, “has contributed to the reputation that Lewis & Clark law students have… for in-depth knowledge, experience, teamwork, and competence[,]” as well as policy research that helped convince the Portland City Council to create funding for a “Universal Representation Project,” providing access to counsel in removal proceedings before Portland Immigration Court.


All their belongings in tow, groups of immigrants huddled together or stood in lines scattered about a plaza in Tijuana along the Mexico-United States border. The mood was somber. On one side of the plaza, two women sat in folding chairs under a small canopy tent where they wrote down the names of people in a notebook and Grupos Beta (part of the Mexican immigration agency) lingered a few feet away. Every morning, immigrants hoping to seek asylum in the United States come to the plaza to put their name on La Lista (The List) in exchange for a number. The list is really nothing more than the aforementioned handwritten notebook. They then return day after day, waiting weeks, even months, for the women under the tent to call their number so that they may cross the border into the United States and plead their case for asylum.

The day before, the United States government had allowed the women to call an unprecedented amount of numbers, many of which belonged to migrants who were not present. Today, these individuals waited anxiously to find out if they had lost their chance and would have to get a new number or if immigration authorities would permit them to cross this morning. Even though there were easily a couple hundred people in the plaza, it was remarkably quiet, as those who expected or hoped to cross kept their eyes and ears tuned for what would happen next.

I had traveled to Tijuana this week to volunteer with a migrant legal aid organization. Staff often referred to the work we were doing as “trying to fly an airplane that is on fire,” and “emergency room legal aid.” There is an urgency to this work as every moment the United States and Mexican government are deciding the fate of individuals through arbitrary systems that are in many ways designed to make the asylum process even more challenging.

At the plaza, volunteer attorneys experience this urgency as they give lightning quick “know your rights” presentations to individuals who might cross the border in the next five minutes, or the next month. Law student volunteers, like myself, experience this urgency as they try to reach each individual to inform them of the services available to them and even to just provide a friendly face in a sea of uneasy bodies.

At one point a mother came rushing up to me asking to borrow a sharpie. She then lifted her son’s shirt and began to write her name and phone number across his chest as if this was a normal and reasonable thing one should have to do. Many people wore long socks and the warmest layer of clothing closest to their skin in preparation for the freezing cold cells, or hilieras that authorities hold immigrants in upon crossing the border. I felt incredibly conflicted, wanting both for every individual to be allowed across the border that day to plead their case, but also wanting to make sure that they were prepared and well-informed for what was potentially to come before they took this next step on their journey.

The urgency I felt both during my time volunteering with migrants in Tijuana as well as through previous experiences volunteering in detention centers and similar scenarios, is an urgency that I believe is present in most public interest legal work. While volunteering in Tijuana, every day brought about an urgency to keep that plane, even though it was still engulfed in flames, in the air. This urgency is not just in the immigration field, as there is a need for quick and oftentimes immediate assistance in many areas of public interest law. A similar sense of urgency is present in the environmental law field. In the fall of 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report which underscored how climate change is affecting and will continue to affect communities across the globe. Public interest legal work is urgently needed to advocate for and institute changes to curb the catastrophic effects that climate change is actively producing and projected to produce.

One of the problems with the urgency that is present in this type of work is the disconnect with how the legal system functions in the United States compared to the speed at which aid, advocacy, and change need to occur. I came to law school because I strongly believe that more legal advocates need to focus on working alongside their communities in order to engage in both systemic change and individual support. I believe in recognizing the urgency that so many people face in their day to day lives, and fighting to both assist with that immediate need and attack the systems that created this need.

As a law student, it can seem incredibly difficult to be an advocate while still in school.

While you are constantly learning new skills that you can apply in the future, much classwork does not allow for direct application to every-day urgent matters. At times, it felt like law school required that I take a break from advocating alongside my community as I learned the skills to do just that. This is why I am extremely grateful for the opportunities I have had over the last three years to get hands-on experiences volunteering in Tijuana, with the CARA Pro Bono Project in Dilley, Texas, and with RAICES in Karnes, Texas among other organizations. These groups recognize the urgency in public interest law and utilize volunteer attorneys and law students, allowing for both to stay engaged in the public interest field.

At home in Portland, I have been fortunate to work with amazingly dedicated and passionate groups as well. This past summer, when more than 120 asylum seekers were transferred to a federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon, groups such as the Innovation Law Lab stepped up to organize volunteers and resources to advocate for these individuals. Due to their organizing expertise, I was able to spend several days a week manning a hotline where detainees could call to ask questions or express concerns. I was also able to visit the facility to help interview and translate for a Portuguese speaker.

This year I continued to volunteer with Innovation Law Lab by organizing and working with a group of students on their BorderX project. BorderX recognizes not just the urgency of immigration work, but the lack of capacity of immigration attorneys compared to the amount of work that needs to be done. The project incorporates a Massive Collaboration Model (MCR) to advocate for immigrants in detention settings who are eligible for bond and parole. By creating a network of volunteers and advocates, this type of work allows for a functional approach to combatting the urgency in the immigration field.

These experiences have further instilled in me a commitment to public interest legal advocacy in my future career as an attorney. It does not appear that the urgency facing those in need of legal assistance is going to diminish any time soon. The plane is still on fire, but every day, the work of amazing advocates and community members keeps the plane in the air. I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to use my legal skills now and in the future to combat this urgency and contribute to putting out that fire.