Thread by @matt_cam

spent final hours of #2019

-explaining to USCIS that no, as previously explained under oath, my married clients are *not related* (DNA test attached)

-suing USCIS for going extremely far out of its way to deny citizenship to an Army servicemember w/no record

-hoping for better

As I have for nearly every day of this decade, I have many clients in ICE custody tonight--some w/little chance of release, all w/family with little to celebrate tonight.

My mind, as it so often is, will be with them. It takes real effort for it to be anywhere else anymore.

I'm still in the office; more out of habit than necessity at this point, as it's just one of the only places in the world I feel entirely comfortable.

This is my 10th year here, but I am not the same person who signed the lease. I may never see him again.

The guy who signed the lease believed that the criminal & immigration justice systems were neutral machines, fundamentally designed to dispense equal justice under the law via competent technocrats. (He should have known better by then, but he was also an insufferable optimist)

I have seen and heard too much to be that person again: police brutality, ICE inhumanity, judicial indifference, and above all the many hundreds of victims of our empire seeking refuge from unspeakable horrors in which every American taxpayer is complicit I have personally met

I have little love for the nation I have spent so much of my time helping my clients become a part of. This is not only because I've seen so much of what and who we really are, but because I have come to abhor the whole idea of "nations" and their murderous borders so much.

I would love nothing more than to wake up in a world in which no one ever needed an immigration lawyer again.

Wishing a safe, peaceful, & joyous New Year to everyone in the fight, whatever and wherever it is.