- October 2025
Source: Adobe Stock
It’s October 2024 in the United States, and tensions are flaring in anticipation of the 47th presidential election. Each vote casts a wish for a better future. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world a man named Teo* and his daughter Nika* make the difficult decision to flee their home country in Eastern Europe, fearing for their lives in the wake of their own national elections.
The two had been targeted by the ruling party for attending protests aimed at controversial new legislation and were accused of involvement with the opposition party. One night, Teo even gets taken from his home and held at gunpoint by people claiming to be from the government. They show pictures of him at the protests and tell him that if he doesn’t become an informant and pass them information about the opposition, that they’ll kill him and his daughter. Luckily, he manages to escape and goes home to pick up Nika. They each pack a bag, say their goodbyes, and skip town under cover of night, with the only home they’ve ever known at their back.
Two months and 11,000 miles of mountains, sea, and wilderness later, the pair arrive to the United States and cross the border into South Texas where they are immediately apprehended by CBP and separated on their way to ICE processing. Nika, who is 18 years old, describes the facility as a huge room with one big window where you have to sleep on the floor and the only food available is cold hamburgers that are served three times a day. Not only is she unable to contact her father in this place, Nika also struggles to communicate with others being held in this facility, since she doesn’t speak Spanish. Alone and afraid, Nika struggles to eat for most of her time here, eventually passing out from lack of nourishment.
After about five days, Nika is transferred to El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville, one of two facilities in the region that house adult migrants apprehended at the border. Here, she comes across two women from her home country who help her get a better understanding of her surroundings. She learns that she’s in detention and that her father is in another facility, but she is still unable to get in touch with him. She is, however, able to communicate with staff in English and manages to call family back home to let them know she’s okay – a momentary comfort despite her circumstances. “It was kind of hard for me because I’ve never been in this kind of situation,” she said. “Detention, it was kind of like a jail.”
45 miles away from El Valle, in the town of Los Fresnos, Teo begins to look for information while detained at Port Isabel Detention Center (PIDC). He finds a tablet in his room that lets him access legal support through the Legal Orientation Program (LOP) but struggles to use it at first because none of the information on it is available in his native language, and unlike his daughter, Teo doesn’t speak English very well. Eventually, he manages to get some support translating it and begins sending messages in broken English asking for information. To his surprise, someone responds, and they tell him they can communicate in his preferred language. A river of questions begins to flow out of Teo. “How can my daughter and I seek asylum in the US?”, “What kind of documents do we need to provide the court?” and most critically, “How can we secure legal representation without any money?”.
To Teo’s relief, the person on the other end of the tablet assures him that it is indeed possible to secure an attorney free of charge through a program called pro bono, and that until he has one, ProBAR will be able to provide him with pro se, or self-help, information to assist in preparing his case for court. In early February, Teo has his first meeting with a paralegal from ProBAR’s detained team, who were also the individuals he had been communicating with through the LOP tablet. He tells them about his and his daughter’s journey and learns about the kind of work ProBAR does helping people like them. Over the next few weeks, the detained team provides pro se information to Teo, supplying general information that Teo can use to guide himself through preparing documents for court and trying to navigate the complex process of connecting his and his daughter’s cases with the hopes of eventually joining them into one case. A few days later, Nika receives a visit from a different paralegal on ProBAR’s detained team who completes an intake and provides pro se information to assist her in navigating her case.
Later in February, Nika receives a visit from the paralegal who met with her father and finally learns that he’s okay. The paralegal also asks her how she’s been doing, and for the first time in months, Nika is given space to process her emotions. She says it felt like speaking to a friend. “[The paralegal] knew I was 18 and she was so sweet, so helpful. It was huge for me”, she said. “I knew my dad was worried and now I could tell him that I’m okay.”
In March of 2025, the ProBAR team pay another visit to PIDC, but this time with a group of attorneys who are in town to provide limited pro bono representation to individuals seeking asylum. This is part of a longstanding tradition at ProBAR, which has dedicated itself to harnessing the power of pro bono along the southern border for more than 35 years. Two of these visitors, attorney Karen Grisez and her associate Natasha Menon, are asked by ProBAR to meet with Teo and Nika and help prepare their applications for asylum. After they complete the applications and finish their visit to ProBAR, they decide to pick up not just Teo’s case, but his daughter’s case as well. This means that after many months of receiving self-help information, Teo and Nika finally have attorneys to represent them in their asylum proceedings. Grisez, a veteran attorney in the field of pro bono immigration work, allows Menon to take the lead on the case under her supervision, and they immediately get to work.
As part of building Teo and Nika’s asylum case, Menon prepares the evidence and puts together a number of supporting documents, including a full country conditions report that bolsters Teo and Nika’s asylum claim. This report contains evidence illustrating the state of their home country and shows why they cannot return. Menon also works with Grisez and ProBAR to successfully secure the consolidation of both cases.
Come April, Teo and Nika have their first hearing as a joined case, which proved to be more challenging than they expected. The court of record was based out of the Port Isabel Service Processing Center, a local facility run by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), but the judge who presided over the case and the attorney representing the government were based out of Fort Worth. Menon and Grisez were appearing virtually. In addition to the challenges posed by these mixed jurisdictions, the judge also informed Menon on the day of the hearing that she herself would be directly examining Menon’s clients, which came as a shock considering that in the normal course of business in immigration proceedings, the attorney representing the individuals seeking asylum would be allowed to conduct the direct examination to ensure that their clients are able to provide all of the information they think is important for the judge to consider. After seeing all the evidence submitted, the judge decides to continue the case. Unfortunately, the next available opening for a hearing in her calendar is two months later. Menon tries to potentially secure parole for Teo and Nika, so that they would not have to spend the next two months in detention. However, due to a blanket rule issued by the federal government the following month, Menon’s request for parole gets denied.
Teo describes detention as being in a complete vacuum, confined to a single area without any access to information, unless you have someone on the outside representing you or providing information. “Otherwise, it’s completely isolated” he says via interpreter. “It’s like the system is trying to break you so you willingly decide to leave the country.” He says that while there is an ICE employee assigned to his case, he did not find them to be a reliable source of information, as he would often not receive information he’d request in a timely manner, let alone in a language he can understand. “It’s important to note that once you start to get some information on your own about this system, you will find out that they are obligated to provide you with help and resources within the premises, but if you don’t speak the language, it’s quite hard,” he adds.
Over the next two months, Menon and Grisez spend countless hours preparing more than 700 pages of documentation, evidence, and briefs to share with the court. Menon meets regularly with Teo and Nika to practice delivering their testimonies, reminding them that while their story may be difficult to share – acknowledging how unfair it is that they must keep repeating it – the best thing they can do for their case is to tell the judge everything they’ve been through in as much detail as possible. Teo also practices speaking in shorter sentences, to ensure that his interpreter can communicate his testimony as accurately as possible.
When the hearing takes place in July, this time with a new immigration judge, things seem a bit more promising than before. This time the hearing is entirely virtual, which means there are no chances for jurisdictional complications. Both Teo and Nika do a great job delivering their testimonies and it becomes evident that the judge has managed to go through all the documentation Menon submitted, gaining a complete understanding of the case and the laws involved. This includes the legal brief which outlines that while Teo and Nika are subject to a regulatory bar to asylum, they should fall under the “Family Unity Exception”, which states that if individuals seeking asylum would otherwise qualify if not for the bar, and they have family outside of the U.S. who would also qualify for asylum – they should then be allowed to get asylum. This exception was meant to ensure that if certain members of a family were able to escape their home country, the family would not be permanently separated, which would be the case if the individuals in the U.S. were only granted withholding of removal or protection under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) and could not use this relief to bring their remaining family members over to the U.S. This brief proves critical to the judge’s decision, and he cites it as the authority that allows him to grant asylum. Nonetheless, when the judge eventually rules in favor of providing relief to Teo and Nika, it still feels like nothing short of a miracle.
Everyone is crying. Menon and her colleague cry together from across the virtual courtroom. Teo and Nika burst into tears on their screen. “I got goose bumps in that moment,” Menon says. “It felt really special and important because they both truly were just looking to start a new life and had already faced so much in a system that had been quite cruel to them. It would have added another layer of cruelty if they had been denied asylum.” Given the recent trends in asylum denials and overturning of grants, Menon also knew to be cautiously optimistic. The government had 30 days to appeal the decision. Thankfully, they do not, and Teo and Nika are granted asylum in August of 2025.
From the moment they entered the United States, Teo and Nika had been racing against the clock, unaware of the sands shifting beneath their feet. Due to the termination of the LOP program in April 2025, resources like the tablets Teo used in detention are no longer available today. Without that tablet, Teo would not have been able to get in touch with ProBAR as easily, and ProBAR would not have been able to connect him and Nika to pro bono representation. Without the help of an attorney or legal advocate, individuals like Teo and Nika are all but guaranteed to be deported without ever having the benefit of telling their story or having their day in court.
“I think especially right now with cuts to funding that are having damaging effects, and the countless individuals who are unrepresented and desperately need help, it’s deeply disheartening. So, to be able to get a win in this kind of climate gave [me] some hope,” says Menon. “I hope that more people use [pro bono] programs like I found at ProBAR to get involved, even if that’s not directly their line of work. It’s not just beneficial for the clients, but for the attorneys as well.”
Now that they’re out of detention, Teo and Nika are able to begin their new life. Teo wants to start working. Nika wants to study acting. “This is my wish,” she says. “I wish that ProBAR could help everyone. I want everyone to experience the help that we have.” Teo adds, “I was lucky that I got to know this organization. I cannot stress it enough.”
*This story features individuals with an active immigration case. For their safety and privacy, names and certain details have been altered to preserve client confidentiality.
