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With immigration courts facing a record backlog of 3.2 million cases, the demand for qualified immigration lawyers has never been greater. But a new analysis shows Houston's immigration courts desperately need more lawyers to fill the void.
In Houston’s three immigration courts, about 29 percent of cases have legal representation as of December 2023, compared to nearly 57 percent five years ago, according to a recent report published by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data research organization within Syracuse University. This is just below the national average of 30 percent but higher than the state average of 19 percent.
With one of the largest dockets of 117,000 pending cases, Houston’s immigration courts need more lawyers to ensure due process and quicker decisions.
“Immigration attorneys are an important ingredient for assuring efficient, not just fair, court proceedings since attorneys play a vital role in alleviating a variety of administrative delays and facilitating a more functional legal process,” the TRAC report states.
Although there is a growing interest in the field, Houston lawyers say that the complexity of ever-changing immigration laws, the mental health toll it takes on lawyers, and lower salaries compared to other types of law are all barriers for lawyers to enter the field.
“There are a lot of lawyers who start doing immigration law and just can't sustain it,” said Anna Cabot, director of the immigration clinic at the University of Houston Law Center.
Cases can take years, laws constantly change, and Texas’ jurisdictions are notoriously hostile, she added.
Most of her students are immigrants or children of immigrants, which comes with an understanding of the immigration system and its impact on clients and their families, but also a unique set of challenges.
“What calls a lot of people to immigration is their own immigration experience,” Cabot said. “But that also creates – sometimes – vulnerabilities to that specific type of trauma. It has a greater mental impact when you've experienced it, or family members or community members experienced it.”
Deborah Billy Gillis-Harry, a second-year law student at the University of Houston, was drawn to the immigration clinic because of her experience migrating from Nigeria. She and her siblings often had to help their mother wade through complicated immigration documents when they were younger. She plans to join a corporate law firm after graduating, and she chose one that will allow her to take pro-bono immigration cases.
“Generally in the legal field, there's that pressure of wanting to help people, but then the actual burden of, ‘Can I afford to take a job that would be lower pay to do that?' It's very tough,” she said.
She encouraged students to consider ways to get involved in immigration law even if they don’t work at an NGO or immigration law firm.
“It doesn't have to be all or nothing,” Gillis-Harry said.
Immigration lawyer Gordon Quan has watched the profession blossom from when he started practicing in 1977. Back then, few lawyers specialized in the area, sometimes just taking a few cases a year on the side. He said the issue now is not just the need for immigration lawyers, but for those with specialized knowledge. A lawyer specializing in work visas might not know much about asylum cases, for example, and vice versa.
“If you're looking for an immigration lawyer, you’ve got to figure out what area of immigration law is the best fit,” Quan said.
Naimeh Salem, a lawyer who grew up in Puerto Rico and has practiced immigration law in Houston since 2011, says that her law firm struggles to find qualified applicants, especially those with language skills.
“First of all, it’s not the most lucrative area of law,” Salem said. “The other thing is that it is so difficult to get to a quick solution. Everything takes forever. An affirmative asylum, for example, could take up to 10 years.”
A more tense political climate since Donald Trump’s presidency has only exacerbated hiring challenges.
“I have been a target at many, many conversations at social gatherings where they start grilling me, asking me, ‘Why would you be helping people who came here illegally?’” Salem said.
Still, once lawyers are hired, Salem said that most stick with the profession when they see the impact. As the child of a Palestinian immigrant who moved to Puerto Rico, she finds it particularly rewarding to reunite families after seeing how her father struggled when he could not visit his family because of his immigration status.
“It is really rewarding because the clients are very grateful,” Salem said. “You know that you're helping them to be able to see their families or to be here without any fear of being deported.”
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