Haynes and Boone corporate lawyers Carla Green and Brent Beckert were meeting with new detainees at the Port Isabel Detention Center in South Texas two weeks ago when they met a young woman so distraught and confused that she could barely communicate.
Over two days in early July, the 29-year-old Honduran mother told the two young lawyers – one specializes in mergers and acquisitions and the other represents businesses in litigation – about fleeing never-ending brutality, rape and threats of death in her homeland with her 12-year-old.
While heartbreaking, the story of what happened after she arrived in the U.S. and how federal immigration authorities handled the Honduran mother’s case stunned Green and Becker and has galvanized one of the largest corporate law firms in Texas to make what is believed to be the single largest commitment by a group of attorneys to help detainees seeking asylum at the Texas border.
During the past two weeks, Haynes and Boone has signed up more than 140 of its appellate specialists, bankruptcy counsel, patent attorneys and corporate transactional lawyers from their offices in Austin, Dallas and Houston to represent and advise detainees for free.
The firm now represents 11 women and two men – all of them with younger children – who fled their native Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador in fear for their lives. They have sent teams of attorneys to the border to interview and advise detainees swept up by immigration officials since the U.S. Department of Justice announced its “zero tolerance” policy in May.
Haynes and Boone lawyers are also lead counsel in Jane Doe v. Department of Homeland Security. Jane Doe is the 29-year-old mother who was on the government’s immediate deportation list when Haynes and Boone lawyers intervened by filing a habeas corpus petition in federal court in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
In a potentially precedent-setting decision, U.S. District Chief Judge Lee Rosenthal of Houston last Thursday issued a temporary restraining prohibiting federal immigration authorities from deporting Jane Doe because she was almost certainly denied due process.
“This case and Judge Rosenthal’s decision to issue a TRO had a big impact far beyond just the case of our client,” says Haynes and Boone partner Emily Black. “Judge Rosenthal, who is one of the most respected judges in the country, is saying that federal district courts in Texas do have jurisdiction to step in on these matters and determine whether individuals are being afforded their rights to due process.”
Haynes and Boone officials say that the firm’s lawyers have worked a few thousand hours for free during the past five weeks on immigrant detainee matters, including the case of Jane Doe. And they say the firm’s commitment to the cause will only multiply in the months ahead.
“Our managing partner, Tim Powers, sent out a ‘call to arms’ and the response from the firm’s lawyers has been overwhelming,” says Haynes and Boone partner Debbie McComas, who represents corporations in cross-border disputes. “Lawyers in just about every office in the firm have signed up. Even a lawyer in our London office wants to be involved.”
The Texas Lawbook interviewed a half-dozen Haynes and Boone lawyers who are representing immigrant detainees with the Texas Civil Rights Project. One of the firm’s clients was released on bond last week. The rest are still being detained at Port Isabel.
The six lawyers say the stories of their clients are heart-breaking. They are parents who were persecuted and tortured by authorities or gangs. Their lives were threatened.
They fled to the U.S. for protection, but they were quickly confronted with immigration officials under orders to turn them away and send them back.
“Every one of the cases we’ve seen involve poor, hard-working folks fleeing their homes in fear of their lives,” says Black, who practices commercial litigation in the firm’s Dallas office. “The detainees don’t know our language. They don’t know our laws. They face a huge federal bureaucracy that even American lawyers find confusing.”
The case of Jane Doe is a perfect example, they say, of the unfair and unconstitutional procedures that the detainees face.
Jane Doe is a single mother who owned and operated her own small food store in El Negrito Yoro, Honduras. She went to elementary school, but has no additional education. Her boyfriend, a former local police officer, became violent. He frequently punched and choked her and raped her multiple times. He tried to stab her in the stomach with a screwdriver. He only failed because he was too drunk.
At the same time, leaders of the Maras Gang extorted her and her business for money.
“After taking all her money, the Maras Gang insisted that [Jane Doe] store guns and drugs in her store for them,” court records show. “When [Jane Doe] refused, the Maras Gang said that they would kill her and they knew where her daughter went to school and they would kill her daughter, too.”
Federal court documents state that the gang is “known to bribe, pay off, collude with, and receive protection from the police.”
As a result, Jane Doe knew that going to the police would not help and would likely make things worse for her and her daughter.
Haynes and Boone lawyers say that Jane Doe and her 12-year-old daughter fled Honduras about May 20 and then traveled 1,100 miles by bus through Guatemala and Mexico. They crossed the Rio Grande on June 8 at McAllen and immediately announced she wanted asylum.
Instead of that shining city on a hill she had long heard about, Jane Doe was instantly charged with illegally entering the U.S., her daughter was “literally pried from her arms” and she was imprisoned at a processing center known as hielera or [The] Ice Box, according to Haynes and Boone lawyers.
“Guards forcibly separated [Jane Doe] from her daughter and told her that she should not have come into the country with her child,” state court records authored by Green, Beckert and other Haynes and Boone lawyers. “[Jane Doe] was told that she would be deported by herself, while her daughter would remain in the U.S. without her.”
Court records show that Jane Doe was transported to an immigration detention facility known as La Perrera, which means “Dog Cage,” because of its resemblance to a dog kennel.
“[Jane Doe] sobbed hysterically, repeatedly asking CBP officers to give her five minutes with her child to let her know that everything would be okay,” court documents state. “In response, the guards screamed at [Jane Doe] to be quiet … and threatened that she would be deported without her child as punishment for her actions.”
Immigration officials kept Jane Doe in the “Dog Cage” for three days and then took her to federal courthouse in Brownsville where she was advised to plead guilty to the misdemeanor charge of illegally entering the U.S. if she wanted to see her daughter anytime soon.
“Under extreme emotional distress, hopeful for a speedy reunion with [her daughter] and not fully understanding the ramifications, [Jane Doe] pled guilty to the charge,” Haynes and Boone lawyers argue in their court petition. “At the courthouse, ICE officers promised [Jane Doe] that she would be reunited with her daughter at PIDC.”
The promise was a lie, Haynes and Boone lawyers stated.
An asylum officer conducted Jane Doe’s official “credible fear interview” by telephone on June 25.
Haynes and Boone partner Luis Campos, who advises American corporations on federal immigration laws and procedures, says the credible fear interviews are brief.
“Detainees go into these very important interviews completely unprepared and the result is that almost all of them get a negative report,” Campos says. “Most of the detainees have not spoken to a lawyer prior to the interview. The detainees are not provided any explanation about what is important and they are not provided the time necessary to explain their entire situation.
“We quickly saw this terrible picture of harassment and deceit by officials against our client,” he says.
In a sworn affidavit presented to the federal court by Haynes and Boone, Jane Doe stated that the asylum officer “insisted that I only answer the questions I was asked and that I was not permitted to expand or elaborate on my answers beyond the questions he asked.
“I attempted to limit my answers so as not to upset [the asylum officer],” Jane Doe said in the affidavit. “Had he asked, I would have told him that I was depressed, traumatized, fearful, and had not in any position to answer questions regarding my traumatic persecution and torture in Honduras.”
Two days later, the asylum officer wrote that Jane Doe had not established a credible fear of persecution if she was sent back to Honduras.
Haynes and Boone partner Leslie Thorne, an Austin lawyer who specializes in complex commercial litigation, said that an immigration officer approached their client with a one-page document in English and told her to sign it.
“The officer pointed to the box for her to sign and he told her that he would report her if she did not sign it,” Thorne says. “At no point did anyone explain the document or the ramifications of her signing the document to our client.”
Four days later, on July 3, Jane Doe met Green and Beckert and told them her story. Beckert and Green filed a G-28 form, notifying Homeland Security officials that they officially represented Jane Doe in all further actions and that they planned to appeal the asylum officer’s findings.
On July 5, an officer with ICE called Beckert to tell him that their representation was “unnecessary” because Jane Doe was subject to an “expedited removal” order and would be promptly deported.
When federal immigration officials declined to discuss the case further, Haynes and Boone lawyers filed a federal habeas petition and asked Chief Judge Rosenthal for the temporary restraining order, which the judge granted.
Black, a partner in the commercial litigation section at Haynes and Boone, says she expects Jane Doe to get a hearing before an immigration judge in the next two weeks.
In the meantime, Haynes and Boone is sending additional groups of lawyers to the border this week.
“This is a huge commitment and I am extremely proud of my firm,” says McComas, who leads the pro bono efforts at Haynes and Boone. “It is the right thing to do.”