For Gracie Willis, an Austin-based raids response attorney for the National Immigration Project, to practice immigration law today is not the same as it was 10 years ago. “A case that I would have taken when I first started my career in 2014, that case, that same set of facts, is going to be harder for me to win today,” Willis said.
“There are things happening that I wouldn’t have ever predicted,” Willis continued. “I would have never said that somebody in X, Y, Z situation would have been at risk of being detained. But here we are.”
Beyond the cost of legal services being an obstacle for many families, entering the legal process itself now poses new risks, attorneys say. ICE is detaining people while they are complying with the requirements of their legal cases, while walking out of necessary in-person interviews, fingerprinting appointments, and immigration court.
“People who are showing up for their hearings are almost being punished for doing that,” Willis said. “People who are literally showing up and trying to get their case moving forward, trying to participate in their case in a meaningful way. All of a sudden, that’s a risk.”
Representation is crucial for people attempting to navigate the immigration system in this country under the second Trump administration, according to a Nov. 20 American Immigration Council report; 62% of people without representation were deported in 2019-2024, compared to 27% with legal counsel. Courts in Dallas, Houston, and El Paso had some of the lowest representation rates in the country, as low as 21%.
Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, immigration lawyer at Lincoln-Goldfinch Law in Austin, represented a mother of six children who are U.S. citizens; her client was suddenly detained while walking out of a courthouse earlier this year. “She was ultimately detained for two months, separated from her daughters. I visited them many times during that period of separation, and I watched her family just unravel without her,” Lincoln-Goldfinch recalled.
Texas houses the most ICE detainees in the U.S. as of Nov. 10. The second Trump administration has sought to bypass due process through “expedited removal,” giving low-level immigration officers authority to remove noncitizens from the U.S. without a hearing, and fired judges under claims of bias. “We don’t want to see any bias, but what they want to see is bias toward deportation,” Willis said.
There are more changes on the horizon. In 2026, the city of Austin will be forced to comply with Senate Bill 8, passed during this year’s legislative session and effective Jan. 1, which requires all sheriffs in counties with jails to partner with ICE in 2026 under one of three programs, potentially taking on some immigration officer functions.
One drastic divergence from regular legal practice came in September, Willis said; in a decision for Jonathan Javier Yajure Hurtado, a Venezuelan citizen requesting a bond hearing to be released from detention in the U.S., the federal government effectively made most people who entered the country without “inspection” at the border ineligible to be released from detention on bond, unless they bring a petition to a federal court.
“And since then, I don’t know, let’s say probably 50,000 people have been deported or have accepted a deportation because they weren’t bond eligible, and they didn’t want to stay detained. All of those are separated families,” Lincoln-Goldfinch said.
Willis had a client who had been previously released from detention on bond, but was detained again at a probation appointment. “And so that raises these questions of, can you revoke somebody’s bond for no reason? If ICE does have a reason to revoke bond, what kind of process do they need to give a person to be able to contest, which is the crux of due process?”
A legal group sued ICE, arguing that it was illegal to deny people in Yajure Hurtado’s situation the right to ask for a bond hearing. On Nov. 25, a federal district court judge overruled the decision, ordering bond hearings to begin again. “But what about all of these families who were impacted in the meantime?” Lincoln-Goldfinch said.
Attorneys are also increasingly defending their clients who are being detained in the midst of their active case. “The difference between doing a non-detained case and a detained case is massively different,” Willis said. “You have to get everything together on a tighter timeline, and you have less access to your client because they’re in detention … where conditions are awful.”
The harm compounds for immigrant communities when attorneys like Willis advise their clients to stay at home as much as possible during their cases. “It’s really, really hard to tell people, ‘If you choose to stay here, if you choose to stay where your family is, your loved ones are, where your life is, your life is going to have to look a whole lot smaller,’” Willis said.
Lincoln-Goldfinch’s law firm bought an old bus back in December, now renovated with the words El Bus Sin Fronteras painted across the yellow side. It’s a mobile legal office, meant to reach people where they are right now. “Honestly, the bus has been such a joy in dark times,” Lincoln-Goldfinch said. “We’ve all got to be really, really engaged, and involved, and very resistant to what is happening.”
This article appears in December 5 • 2025.