Access to Justice: Behind the Walls of Immigration Detention

Why I Do This Work

I became a lawyer because I believe that justice should not depend on the size of someone's bank account. That belief is easy to hold in the abstract. It becomes real when you sit across from a detained asylum seeker — someone who fled persecution, crossed borders, survived things most of us cannot imagine — and you realize that without competent legal representation, this person will almost certainly be deported back to the danger they escaped.

That is why I take asylum cases. Not because they are easy. They are among the hardest cases I handle. I take them because everyone who appears before an immigration judge deserves someone in their corner who is prepared, present, and genuinely invested in their outcome.

The Reality of Detained Asylum Cases

Most people have no idea what immigration detention looks like from the inside. The clients I have represented were held in detention facilities in New Mexico — far from family, far from community, far from anything familiar. Many had traveled from sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, fleeing persecution based on political opinion, religion, ethnicity, or membership in a particular social group.

Detention takes a toll that is difficult to overstate. Communication with the outside world is limited. Legal resources inside these facilities are scarce. Many detainees do not speak English fluently and depend on interpretation services that are inconsistent at best. The mental health impact of prolonged detention — the uncertainty, the isolation, the constant fear of what comes next — compounds the trauma these individuals already carry from their home countries.

Meeting a detained client today rarely means walking into a facility. Most communication happens through virtual calls — but even that is far from simple. Scheduling a video call with a detained client requires navigating layers of facility protocols, limited call windows, and technology that frequently fails. A client may wait days for a scheduled legal call only to have it cut short due to a facility lockdown or a system glitch. When the call does connect, you are speaking to someone through a screen who may be sitting in a noisy common area with no privacy, trying to share the most painful details of their life. That first conversation is not about legal strategy. It is about being human.

Building a Case That Matters

Asylum cases demand precision. The legal standard requires demonstrating a well-founded fear of persecution on account of a protected ground — race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. That standard sounds straightforward on paper. In practice, it requires exhaustive preparation.

Every case begins with research. Country conditions reports, human rights documentation, news sources, and expert analysis all become part of the evidentiary foundation. I need to understand not just what happened to my client, but the broader context of persecution in their home country — patterns of government abuse, treatment of minority groups, and whether there is any realistic possibility of internal relocation.

Then comes the hardest part: working with the client to tell their story. Asylum seekers are often asked to recount the worst moments of their lives — torture, threats, the death of loved ones — in precise, chronological detail. Any inconsistency, even a minor one, can be used to undermine credibility. Preparing a client to testify is not about coaching a narrative. It is about building enough trust that they feel safe sharing the full truth, and then organizing that truth into a framework that the immigration court will recognize and credit.

There are no shortcuts. A missed detail in a country conditions report, an unprepared witness, a failure to identify the correct particular social group — any of these can be the difference between protection and deportation. In asylum work, attention to detail is not a professional virtue. It is a moral obligation.

A Legal Landscape That Keeps Shifting

Immigration law does not stand still, and practitioners who fail to keep up put their clients at risk.

Consider what has happened with bond hearings. For nearly three decades, immigration judges had the authority to grant bond to detained individuals who could demonstrate they were not a flight risk or danger to the community. In September 2025, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued its decision in Matter of Yajure Hurtado, ruling that immigration judges lack authority to conduct bond hearings for individuals present in the United States without admission. That single decision effectively subjected millions of people to mandatory detention — many of whom had been living in the country for years, had families, held jobs, and posed no risk whatsoever.

The practical impact has been devastating. People who previously could seek release while their asylum cases were pending now face months or even years of detention. Federal district courts across the country have pushed back through habeas corpus petitions, but the outcomes vary dramatically depending on which federal circuit the detention facility falls under. An asylum seeker detained in New Mexico under the Tenth Circuit may have options that someone transferred to a facility in Texas under the Fifth Circuit does not.

This is what I mean when I say the law is constantly changing. Staying current on BIA decisions, circuit court rulings, policy memoranda, and regulatory changes is not optional. It is foundational to competent representation. A legal argument that worked six months ago may no longer be viable today, and a new avenue of relief may have opened that did not exist last year.

Empathy as a Legal Skill

Law school teaches you how to analyze statutes and construct arguments. It does not teach you how to sit with someone who is trembling while describing what happened to their family. It does not teach you how to explain a complex legal process to someone who has never been inside a courtroom, through an interpreter, in a setting where every word carries enormous weight.

Being an effective asylum attorney requires empathy — not as a soft skill, but as a core professional competency. A client who does not trust their attorney will not share the full scope of their experience. A client who feels rushed or dismissed will leave out details that may be critical to their case. A client who feels like a case number rather than a person will disengage from a process that already feels stacked against them.

I approach every client with a simple commitment: I will treat you with the dignity this system often does not. I will listen before I strategize. I will be honest about what I can and cannot do. And I will prepare your case as if the outcome matters — because it does. For these clients, the result is not a legal statistic. It is their life.

Why This Work Matters

Asylum representation has made me a better attorney. It has sharpened my research skills, deepened my understanding of federal immigration law, and reinforced something I believe every lawyer should carry with them: the privilege of holding a law license comes with a responsibility to use it for people who need it most.

I do not share this to seek recognition. I share it because the need for competent, compassionate asylum representation has never been greater. The legal landscape is more hostile than it has been in decades. Detention populations are growing. Access to counsel remains woefully inadequate.

If you believe in justice — not the abstract concept, but the lived reality of it — then these cases matter. Every person who appears before an immigration judge deserves to be heard, to be understood, and to have their case presented with skill and seriousness. That is what access to justice means. That is why I do this work.

Attorney Aakash Sharma is the founder of the Law Office of Aakash Sharma, LLC, a Connecticut-based practice focused on immigration law and estate planning. He is licensed in Connecticut and serves clients nationwide.