There are days in this work when the weight of what we witness feels almost unbearable. Not because the law is complicated—we are used to that—but because the outcomes reveal something far more troubling: a system that too often operates without urgency, without compassion, and without regard for the human lives caught inside it.
Recently, I found myself sitting with two stories that refuse to leave me.
The first is a woman from Uganda. She filed for asylum in 2020 after fleeing for her life. Like so many, she had to leave her family behind—her husband and children—hoping that safety in the United States would eventually allow her to reunite with them.
She has done everything right. She has complied with the system. She has shown up. She has told her story. She has waited. And waited. She has already had two asylum interviews, the most recent more than a year ago. Under normal circumstances, her case should have been adjudicated. Instead, she remains in limbo because this administration has effectively stopped processing asylum claims.
Over the weekend, while she continued to wait for a decision that could change her life, her husband died.Â
Pause there for a moment. Imagine fleeing for your life. Imagine leaving your family behind with the promise that you will find safety and bring them to you. Imagine doing everything the system asks of you—and then being forced to sit, powerless, as time slips away. She will never get that time back.
The second story is no less devastating, though quieter in its cruelty.
A client who survived severe domestic violence is trying to rebuild her life here in the United States. She is eligible for a work permit—something that would allow her to support herself, obtain a driver’s license, and begin regaining her independence and that of her children.
But she cannot get it. Not because she is ineligible. Not because she failed to apply. Not because she did anything wrong. She cannot get it simply because she is from Nigeria.
Under current policies, individuals from dozens of countries—including hers—are being denied basic immigration benefits as a matter of course. No individualized assessment. No meaningful process. Just a blanket denial that keeps her trapped in dependency and uncertainty.
This is what systemic cruelty looks like.
It is not always loud. Sometimes it is administrative. Sometimes it is buried in policy decisions and unexplained delays. But its impact is profound: families separated, survivors stuck, lives placed on indefinite hold.
And then there is a third story—one that speaks directly to what we claim to value.
This week, I received an email from a community member:
“We have had several refugee families contact our church with this issue – the parents have been deported (for example, to Honduras). Their children are still here in the US, and they want to try to reunite the children with their parents in the country they were deported to. Have you had any experience with this type of situation?”
Let that sink in. Parents deported. Children left behind in the United States. Families now trying to reverse-engineer reunification—not into safety, but into the very countries their parents were forced to return to.
We often hear about “family unity” as a guiding principle of immigration law. It is cited in statutes, invoked in policy discussions, and held up as a moral cornerstone. But what does that principle mean in practice when families are being split apart in exactly this way? What does it mean when the system itself creates the very separations it claims to prevent?
These stories are not outliers. They are not rare. They are not hypothetical. They are happening right now. And if there is anything to take from them, it is this: anger is a rational response.
There is a kind of anger that comes from witnessing injustice up close—not abstractly, but in the lives of real people whose suffering is entirely avoidable. It is the kind of anger that refuses to accept that this is simply “how the system works.”
But that anger is not the end of the story. For those of us who do this work, it becomes fuel.
It sharpens our advocacy. It deepens our commitment. It reminds us why we fight—not just for individual cases, but for a system that recognizes the humanity of the people within it.
Because if the system can be this indifferent, it can also be changed. We have seen policies shift. We have seen barriers fall. We have seen families reunited against the odds.
Hope, in this context, is not naive optimism. It is persistence. It is showing up again and again, even when the outcomes feel uncertain. It is believed that better is possible—and working relentlessly to make it so.
So yes, there is anger. But there is also resolve. And there is still hope for better days ahead.