"But what for?" K. added.

"We are unable to tell you," they said. "Go to your room and wait. Proceedings have been instituted against you. You will be informed of everything in due course."

Kafka, The Trial

Like Joseph K., the Kafka protagonist who finds himself accused of a crime he does not understand, by a person he has never met, the mostly Spanish-speaking men and women sequestered at The Department of Homeland Security's Arizona detention centers at Florence, Eloy and Phoenix are bound up in an utterly foreign process, the outcome of which often determines the course of the rest of their lives.

In conjunction with the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, several College of Law students have committed themselves, pro bono, to helping those detained aliens navigate the vast Homeland Security bureaucracy. Many of those, including College of Law 2L Rene Siqueiros, also speak Spanish, which helps alleviate the otherworldly sense of displacement and loneliness accompanying incarceration in a foreign country.

As a boy, Rene watched the INS' frequent raids on his largely immigrant neighborhood in Mesa, Arizona. Rene, a natural-born citizen, and his mother, then a resident alien, were safe from the green-uniformed INS agents of Rene's memories. But Rene's father, an undocumented immigrant worker, was often swept up with other neighborhood men, marked for deportation.

"I look back on it now, and its very funny," says Siqueiros. "I remember my father being dragged away on Friday, telling me not to worry, that he'd be back on Sunday night. He and the other fathers would smuggle themselves back to Arizona over the weekend, in time for work on Monday."

Siqueiros' path from passive witness to active participant took him first to Nogales, Arizona, where he finished high school; after graduation, he enlisted in the Army, where he served in Germany as a paratrooper. Honorably discharged, Siqueiros returned to the States and enrolled at the University of Arizona, his eventual alma mater.

"I stuffed parachutes and jumped from airplanes-so it's not surprising that I reentered civilian life with few marketable skills. But I knew I needed to go to college, if I was going to make anything of myself. Senior year, I began to think a lot about how I grew up, and how where you're born affects your position in society. So I took a year off after undergrad, and thought about a lot of things. I decided to become a lawyer."

Siqueiros says he wanted to work with FIRRP from the second day of law school, when he heard that the Phoenix firm of Bacon & Dear offered summer scholarships for FIRRP externs. 

"A second-year student asked me what kind of law I wanted to practice, and I told him immigration. That student had worked at FIRRP the year before, and thought it was a great experience. So I applied, and Ms. Bacon's generous scholarship enabled me to work at Florence over the summer of 2003."

The scholarship, made possible by a gift by Roxana Bacon and Diane Dear, has enabled about fifteen College of Law students to work with FIRRP.

College of Law Assistant Dean of Student Life & Development Michael Bossone says, "I know firsthand that [The Bacon & Dear Scholarship] has not only provided these students with invaluable immigration law experience, but it has also touched their hearts like no other law school experience has. Our collaborative pro bono project with FIRRP has also enabled a larger number of students to have exposure, though much more limited exposure, to this remarkable organization and the important work they are doing."

College of Law Dean Patricia White agrees: "We are proud of our involvement with the Florence Project. Its singular humanitarian focus allows the students to grow professionally and personally. Our students return from Florence changed."

FIRRP provides free legal services to people detained by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, formerly known as the INS, providing assistance for defendants facing deportation charges, 90% of which go unrepresented due to poverty. FIRRP was created in 1989 in response to a plea from Immigration Judge John J. McCarrick, who was concerned indigent people in removal proceedings were in danger of having their rights disregarded. McCarrick urged Phoenix area attorneys to fill the gap in representation left by the absence of a public defender system in immigration proceedings. To remedy this crisis in representation, Attorney Chris Brelje, supported and encouraged by his law firm Lewis and Roca, spent a year establishing the project. With services first in Florence, FIRRP expanded its reach to include legal services first at the Eloy Detention Center in 1998, then in Phoenix and Globe for detained children in late 2000. In January 2001, the Integrated Social Services Program was added to address the mental health and social needs of FIRRP's clients.

"We provide holistic, free legal services to immigrants, refugees, and U.S. citizens," explains Dayna Anderson, The Florence Project's Director of Development and Communications. "We serve people who would otherwise have no place else to turn to for assistance in navigating the complex US immigration system."

For Siqueiros, working with Anderson and the other staff at FIRRP was everything he'd hoped it would be, and more. 

"I couldn't begin to measure all I learned there. I learned what it means to be an attorney-and after the pressures of first year, where most students reevaluate their commitments-it was refreshing to work with people who were doing what they loved, and wanted to be there. With the proper amount of supervision, I had my own caseload-from briefs, to motions, to pleadings, to appearances; it was a crash-course in the real-world practice of law."

Siqueiros fondly recalls the case he thinks best exemplifies his Florence experience: "With the crackdown on illegals after 9-11, a lot of people are being arrested and deported for what are very minor crimes, things that they did years ago. One gentleman, whose last infraction was three years back, before his sobriety, woke one morning to find BICE agents at his front door. He'd been in this country for 20 years, working, married. He was even the facilitator at AA meetings. He'd really turned his life around, but it didn't matter. I was fortunate to see his case from beginning to end-I drove his wife from Phoenix to Eloy to see him, filed motions and pleadings, really worked for him. In the end, my motion to terminate deportation proceedings was granted, and he was allowed to return to his life. He was so surprised. He was concerned he couldn't pay me, and offered me a junked truck that he owned instead. I told them that gratitude was payment enough, and drove them to the bus station, so they could return home to California. It was a truly transformative experience."

Contact: Stephen Marlowe  
ASU College of Law 
(480) 965-6181
mailto:stephen.marlowe@asu.edu