Pro bono help in short supply

Laura Barrera is the UNLV Immigration Clinic’s Bernstein fellow, supported by a grant from local personal injury firm Edward M. Bernstein and Associates. The funding enabled her to travel to Texas to hunt down her client.

Immigration lawyers in private practices might not be so fortunate, she said, and Texas’ immigration lawyers are already stretched thin.

“When you have a client, you can’t just, like, give up on them just because they’re gone,” Barrera said. “You can’t represent someone without being able to communicate with them. I felt like I needed to make sure his rights weren’t being violated.” actions he saw when working in the Middle East before moving to Las Vegas.

“I’ve never dealt with anything like this,” he said. “This was the sort of thing I’d expect of the Egyptian government. It’s not the sort of thing I’d expect of the U.S. government in the past.”

‘No right to an attorney’

But Mark Krikorian, executive director at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates for limiting immigration, said there’s no legal responsibility for the government to provide undocumented immigrants with public representation.

“As far as immigration issues go, that’s a civil matter,” Krikorian said. “After all, an American in divorce court or bankruptcy court has no right to an attorney.”

When Barrera finally tracked down her client, she learned he’d been released from Port Isabel early Wednesday after about a week at the facility.

He is required to check in with ICE in about a month, giving Barrera time to sort through the documents in his case to prepare his defense.

Meanwhile, Barerra said her client’s wife is back at their home in the Northern Triangle of Central America, which consists of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

About two weeks ago, Barrera said her client had received a ruling from a Las Vegas immigration judge that would prevent ICE agents from immediately deporting him.

But given all that has transpired since then, she said she needs to circle back to see where things stand.

“I need to talk to ICE,” she said. As she sat and explained the situation to her client as best she could Thursday evening, his daughter, dressed in a pink skirt, played with a pair of sunglasses and tugged at her father to get his attention.

“I know she was just really excited to be with him again,” Barrera said, adding that after two months apart, she could see the man’s stress melt away ever so slightly with his daughter by his side.

Contact Jessie Bekker at jbekker@ reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4563. Follow @jessiebekks on Twitter.