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.
