Last November, I spoke with Immigration Law & Justice NY asylum attorney, Nneka Okpara, about what she wants ILJNY’s supporters to know about her work with asylum seekers, how that work is changing now, and where she finds hope amidst challenging times.
Although an asylum attorney’s work has never been easy, it has gotten all the more challenging under the repressive policies of Trump’s second term. Applying for and obtaining a grant of asylum is an extremely lengthy process that requires a demanding analysis of an applicant’s life and their experiences of severe harm and persecution, against a background of mounting legal and bureaucratic hurdles.
Applicants usually wait years before their cases are heard, because of a backlog of asylum cases pending in immigration courts and asylum offices that ballooned during the COVID-19 pandemic, surging to 1.5 million defensive applications in front of the courts and 1.5 million pending affirmatively with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). On top of that, immigration judges are denying asylum cases faster and at higher rates under pressure from the Trump administration and ICE has ramped up arrests at immigration courts.
Nneka joined ILJNY as an asylum attorney in 2022. She is also currently the Visiting Senior Fellow at Immigration ARC (I-ARC) for the Black Immigrant’s Initiative Program. Before joining ILJNY, Nneka worked as an Immigration Staff Attorney at the Urban Justice Center’s Youth Project and the Sex Worker’s Project. She also worked in Los Angeles as a Law Clerk for Immigrant Defenders Law Center representing unaccompanied minors and interned in Popayan, Colombia for an NGO committed to raising awareness and stopping the practice of human and labor trafficking.
In January 2025, Nneka helped a client from Ecuador win asylum. She will soon be able to apply for a green card and be reunited with her daughter, who still resides in their home country. By April 2025, however, an immigration judge denied another case, which Nneka is continuing to fight on appeal.
When I spoke with Nneka, she had recently returned from the Immigration Law & Justice network’s annual roundtable. “Part of the conversation there was reframing what victories look like in this landscape,” Nneka said.
There are victories that might seem more mundane, but can be incredibly important as Nneka’s clients navigate heightened uncertainty and fears of detention and deportation.
For example, Nneka represents a client from Senegal whose political asylum claim faced tough odds in court given the current State Department’s positive characterization of Senegal’s political landscape.
The client’s U.S. citizen wife had filed a family-based petition on his behalf, but the stakes at his individual hearing were extraordinarily high: if his application for asylum was denied at the hearing, he likely would have been detained at the courthouse, regardless of the pending family-based petition.
Nneka filed a motion to terminate the client’s removal proceedings or to postpone the hearing date based on the pending family petition, but the clerk warned her that the judge rarely granted these kinds of motions. So while Nneka worked with the client and his family to prepare for his hearing, the client was trying to make a difficult decision between voluntarily leaving the country – which would mean leaving his wife and child – or risking detention.
“Then, at the last minute [before the hearing], I got a notification that the judge had entered an order. She denied the motion to terminate but granted the motion to continue. She set a Master Calendar Hearing for next year. Everyone was so relieved. [Even though his asylum case hasn’t been granted], it’s a win because at least the judge was kind enough to give him a chance to get the I-130 [family-based petition] approved.”
In her day-to-day work, Nneka says people might underestimate how much an asylum attorney’s job is made up of small but painstaking administrative tasks. She helps clients navigate bureaucratic hurdles like scheduling Social Security appointments, or getting documentation needed for a Real ID.
“[USCIS] used to send [social security cards] automatically when someone received their work permit, but they’ve changed that. Now, you have to proactively make an appointment, and all these systems are in English, so making the appointments are not as intuitive as it’d seem. Since they changed [the social security card process], I’ve helped my clients make their appointments. Those little things that take up a lot of time sometimes.”
“What I’m working on depends on upcoming deadlines, follow-ups, and outstanding things on cases,” Nneka told me. And amid all of this, she tries to preserve her own mental health by acknowledging that she can’t do everything for everyone in order to guard against burning out. “I can’t pour from an empty cup,” she said. “I have to decide when I can’t take on more clients.”
Even in this bleak and challenging climate, Nneka’s commitment to her clients remains rooted in hope. “I got into doing this work to help people – to see the actual impact of helping people flee trauma. Seeing them get that [asylum] victory and realizing, ‘I don’t have to go back to that traumatic situation’,” is incredible. When she zooms out, Nneka says, the struggle is worth it: “I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
Especially now, Nneka calls for keeping immigration advocacy at the forefront of the political conversation. “Immigration is still worth championing. We’re still a nation of immigrants, regardless of whether someone is saying otherwise.
Amidst the bleak headlines, we can’t lose sight of the fact “that these are real people with real lives, who deserve to be happy and feel safe, regardless of whether it’s politically expedient or not.” Fighting to give someone the ability to live with dignity and respect is vital and worthwhile, even when things feel futile.
For those who feel overwhelmed or demoralized by the current landscape of immigration, Nneka urges them to hold on: “If you are feeling despair, it’s important to hold out hope.”