Priscilla Orta is a supervising attorney with the nonprofit Lawyers For Good Government, which offers pro bono legal services to asylum-seekers. She says enticing lawyers to go down the immigration law path is tough, it’s even tougher if there are fewer out there.

“It’s a perfect storm. More people aren’t going to law school. More people are coming. It’s very difficult to be an immigration lawyer, not just financially but emotionally. And those of us who are still in the business, we do not have the funding we need to help more people. We can help many more people but we need more support,” Orta told Border Report on Wednesday.

Each judge closed on average around 975 cases in Fiscal Year 2022, but it is not nearly enough to close the backlog, says Priscilla Orta, of Lawyer for Good Government.

“This is like, you know, a classic, I Love Lucy episode when they’re trying to catch the chocolates. It’s just not gonna happen. There’s not enough people,” says Orta, supervising attorney for the nonprofit’s Project Corazon, which is based in Brownsville and helps to provide free legal services for asylum seekers.

But Priscilla Orta, a supervising attorney at Brownsville, Texas-based Lawyers for Good Government, which provides legal aid to migrants, said separations aren’t common in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, noting that Customs and Border Protection drops people off at designated locations. Few migrants stay overnight because even if family members are processed separately, there is little delay before they reunite at a welcome center. Spouses are often processed together, she said.

“If you came here you’d have absolutely no idea that thousands of people were processed daily,” Orta said. “There’s zero chaos.”

Priscilla Orta, supervising attorney of Project Corazon at Lawyers for Good Government, said curtailing asylum protections would contribute to human rights violations around the world.

“If this proposed deal goes through, thousands of refugees fleeing for their lives will be returned to their home countries to once again face persecution and death. Many will die,” she said. “These changes to asylum law would violate our international obligations and decimate decades-old immigration laws that were passed with almost unanimous support. We categorically oppose any attempts to build even higher barriers to asylum and reject Trump-like attempts to dismantle our asylum system. We are better than this.”

McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — Low-income migrants arrested in Texas under Operation Lone Star can receive legal counsel, the state’s highest court says, and that’s welcome news for a nonprofit that represents migrants in court.

Priscilla Orta, supervising attorney for Lawyers for Good Government’s Project Corazon, which provides free legal aid for migrants, says she is glad that the state’s highest court understands the need for migrants in Texas to have legal representation.

“It does help folks. First, it helps them understand what is going on and what the consequences are. Second, it helps those that want to fight, and actually defend their cases. And third, it forces the government to be accountable for their actions,” Orta told Border Report on Monday.

Priscilla Orta, supervising attorney for the nonprofit Lawyers For Good Government’s Project Corazon program, questioned whether Salinas’ Jr.,’ actions were legal.

“The real legal question is whether the city council or mayor has the right to take a public property and make it private under Texas law?” Orta told Border Report on Wednesday.

Her organization helps asylum-seekers who are waiting south of the border, and she has been outraged by recent reports that forces positioned on the border in Eagle Pass were told to turn back migrants into the river and to deny them water and other resources when they tried to cross into the United States.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge has blocked the Biden administration's asylum rule for migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In his ruling on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in Oakland, California, deemed the rules unlawful, saying they imposed conditions on asylum-seekers that Congress didn't intend.

“The ruling is a victory, but each day the Biden administration prolongs the fight over its illegal ban, many people fleeing persecution and seeking safe harbor for their families are instead left in grave danger,” Katrina Eiland, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, who argued the case, said in a statement to the press.

What happens now?

Tigar’s ruling is on hold for 14 days to give the government time to appeal. That appeal is expected to be filed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Nothing changes for 14 days. … And we wait to see if the 9th [Circuit Court of Appeals] says, ‘The asylum ban continues while we reach a decision,’” Priscilla Orta, an immigration lawyer in Brownsville, Texas, told VOA.

Orta has been crossing the border into Matamoros, Mexico, almost weekly to explain to migrants the process they are about to face.

But Priscilla Orta, a supervising attorney for  Project Corazon, a part of Lawyers For Good Government, told Border Report on Wednesday the processing of children should be immediate so they can be transferred to other federal agencies that are more equipped to meet their needs.

“CBP was never designed to house children. And it was never designed to house anyone long term. And it was never designed to really house people with serious medical needs. That was never ever ever the design. CBP was designed to process people at the border, check their papers and and then either give them to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), or parole,” Orta said.

Orta said the additional responsibilities placed on CBP officers, such as conducting credible fear interviews, further strains their resources and stretches thin services, and can lead to more dire consequences.