Thread by @HMAesq

As a practicing immigration lawyer, I have grown weary of the comment, "So, business must be pretty good with Trump in office?"

Do oncologists get happy when the cancer rate spikes?

We're in the business of alleviating human suffering by providing a secure path to prosperity: lawful immigration status in a great country. For victims, families, entrepreneurs, workers...It should not be a minefield, but under Trump, that is exactly what it is becoming.

So what's it like practicing immigration law in this administration?

First, I want to be clear: it's nothing compared to what our clients are going through.

But that doesn't mean it's easy: there are rarely any routine cases anymore. We find ourselves saying “no, there's nothing we can do for you” more often.

Even if there is a way, clients are justifiably scared, even terrified. Will the legal basis for the asylum claim we've articulated remain good law? What happens if the law changes mid-process? Will there be a chance to refile before getting placed in deportation proceedings?

Will the government even follow the law, and if not, will we get a chance to take them to court?

Immigration lawyers have become quite accustomed to putting on “evil genius” hats to advise our clients.

We're seeing processing delays across the board, and I cannot tell my clients whether the advice I'm giving them will be nullified by tomorrow's 5 AM tweet. But besides processing times, the law itself turns into shifting sands.

I recently had to get a case I filed nearly 3 years ago continued because Sessions suddenly made it harder for Central American gang-based/domestic violence-based claims to succeed. Earlier this year, Sessions took away an immigration judge's ability to control her own docket.

What about clients who are in lawful status? Surely the administration isn't going after them? Think again. USCIS is planning to make it easier to deny cases, and then pump them into the overburdened immigration court system for deportation.

Just as we saw with the #MuslimBan, the administration is offensively using chaos: make the system unpredictable, and people will either not come, not apply for protection, or retreat into hiding for later apprehension and removal.

People seeking asylum relate tales of the law not working in their countries; police in bed with criminal gangs, bribery as standard operating procedure, and no chance to tell their story. Now, I see the same things happening here.

I was a volunteer lawyer at Washington-Dulles International Airport on the night of the first Muslim ban in January 2017. Despite having a court order in hand, we were barred from meeting any detained clients.

Since then, we've been inundated with the horrors of cruel, calculated family separation at the border, ramped up deportations without any sense of prioritization, denial of access to counsel, and deplorable, dehumanizing language from the highest offices in the land.

We are tasked with coaxing lawful status out of a system being reprogrammed into a deportation machine. Hateful rhetoric spews from Washington on a daily basis, finding its way into actual policy. Laws are interpreted to make it impossible for immigrants to become American.

When there is a way, ICE steps in to deport them before they get a chance. Our clients are criminalized, and then robbed of both access to counsel and the due process of law that all criminals get.

The federal bench is being stacked with judges who subscribe to this narrative, and in immigration court, judges are robbed of autonomy and pressured to order removals as fast as possible.

There is a well-organized, financed, and purposeful anti-immigrant movement in this country, and they've been at work for decades to ethnically purge the United States of America. We all need to understand this crucial point: these policies were not cooked up by the White House.

This movement – started by white nationalist Dr. John Tanton – has wrecked our immigration law. It's time we put the blame where it belongs. This administration has bought into the emboldened white nationalist narrative of fear of an immigrant “invasion.”

They fight against that which always made America great by closing their eyes to basic humanity.

So when someone asks me whether I'm rolling in money under Trump, I tell them the truth: I'm not.

Because I cannot imagine what this poisonous rhetoric will even begin to cost us.