Eric Seitz is on a plane to El Paso today to prepare his client in one of the most important court hearings in the bankruptcy lawyer’s career, but the case has nothing to do with corporate restructuring, creditors or debt.
The client is a 31-year-old Honduran father who brought his teenaged sister to the U.S. last spring in order to flee murderous gangs who beat him within an inch of his life and threatened to do the same to his family.
On Tuesday, a federal immigration judge will decide if the man should be granted asylum or deported back to his homeland.
The good news for the detainee is that he will have two lawyers from the corporate law firm Akin Gump by his side arguing his case.
“It’s a huge change from representing a faceless entity or a financial reorganization to a real person who is quite literally fighting for his life,” said Seitz, who is a senior counsel in the firm’s Dallas office. “This experience has truly enriched my practice of law.”
Seitz is one of nearly a dozen lawyers at the Akin Gump corporate law firm – including four from its Texas offices – to spend multiple days at immigration detention facilities near the border in recent weeks advising detainees who seek asylum.
Scores of lawyers rushed to border detention facilities this summer when the Trump Administration announced its zero tolerance policy toward illegal immigration, including instituting a policy to separate migrant mothers and fathers from their children.
Federal statistics show that immigrants seeking asylum have significantly better chances if they are represented by counsel.
Immigration advocates worried that the number of attorneys offering their pro bono services at the border would fade when media coverage declined.
Akin Gump is one of several law firms that made a commitment to keep its focus on asylum efforts.
Leaders of the firm, which was founded in Dallas in 1945 by Robert Strauss and Richard Gump, sent an email a few months ago to hundreds of business lawyers at Akin Gump seeking volunteers to handle pro bono work at the border.
“We were contacted by the ABA Commission on Immigration seeking help,” said Lauren Connell, who is full-time pro bono counsel at Akin Gump. “Several of our lawyers responded quickly that they would go.”
Seitz, a 2008 graduate of the SMU Dedman School of Law, raised his hand.
“I was enlightened by others in the law firm who got involved,” he said. “It was truly intimidating at first. These people’s lives are literally hanging in the balance.”
Since December 2017, Seitz has made seven trips to the border to meet with detainees at the immigration holding facilities, including the Port Isabel detention center near Harlingen and the Karnes Center outside of San Antonio.
On Monday morning, Seitz and another Akin Gump lawyer fly to El Paso to meet with their Honduran client at the West Texas Detention Facility in Sierra Blanca about 80 miles southeast of El Paso on Interstate 10.
“They told me it was in the middle of nowhere, and they were right,” he said.
Seitz will spend a couple hours Monday preparing for the deportation hearing with the client and then the hearing is Tuesday afternoon in a makeshift immigration court at the detention facility.
Seitz admits his client’s record has issues. The man was a driver of a produce truck for Honduran farmers seeking to sell their goods at market. Gangs extorted money from him as part of a toll for safe passage.
“When he didn’t have money, the gangs would beat him until he was unconscious and threatened to kill his family,” the lawyer told The Texas Lawbook. “His mother asked him to take his sister and leave.”
Seitz said his client and his 17-year-old sister crossed the border in El Paso and immediately turned themselves into immigration officials and sought asylum. He passed the initial credible fear interview given by an asylum officer.
But then problems arose. Immigration officials discovered that the man had a prior criminal record in the U.S. He had originally come to the U.S. in 2006, where he lived and worked for several years without any issues, including having two children. But in 2015, his then-girlfriend filed a domestic assault charge against him so that she could take the children and move out of state with another man.
Unrepresented by counsel, the man agreed to plead guilty “to avoid embarrassment to his family,” Seitz said. As a result, he was immediately deported.
After two years back in Honduras and the constant violence and threats, Seitz’s client, who is a devoutly religious man, returned to the U.S. last May. He and his sister were immediately separated.
Truth be told, Seitz doesn’t really know what to expect at the hearing, but he encourages more lawyers to get involved.
“If you don’t do it, no one will,” he said. “Once you are there on the ground, you will see the evidence of how much need there is. I don’t care what your politics are, there are people here who need effective legal representation and only lawyers can provide it.”
Akin Gump also represents five other detainees – three from Honduras, one from El Salvador and one from Mexico – who are all fathers held in immigration holding facilities in South Texas. One Honduran father has been separated from his nine-year-old son for six months and a father from El Salvador was separated from his 16-year-old son earlier this spring.
“He brought his teenaged son here to keep him from being taken by Salvadoran gangs,” said Akin Gump litigation partner Estela Diaz. “His primary mission was to save his son. This is a miscarriage of justice.”