As an attorney at Mostyn Law we have the opportunity to represent people who are wronged every day, and it truly is a blessing to get to be the voice for people who cannot stand up for themselves. Whether it’s fighting against insurance companies with unlimited litigation budgets or standing up for people exposed to dangerous chemicals as a result of maritime collisions, our firm’s ability to take cases on a contingent basis means we can represent anyone no matter how much money they have. However, the most personally rewarding cases I have ever worked on are the ones for which no money will ever change hands.
At the age of four, my client’s father was murdered. At the age of eight, he was abandoned by his mother. At the age of fifteen he decided to make the trip from Honduras to the United States to be with his sister, the only family he had left to care for him. He did not try to sneak into this country for free handouts or hide from immigration officers. Instead at the end of his 1400 mile journey he turned himself in to Border Patrol and asked for help. After being detained in Brownsville he was shipped to Chicago, Illinois where he was detained for over four months. My client spent his sixteenth birthday in that detention center until he was ultimately released to his sister.
Shortly thereafter is when I first met my client. I walked with him through the family law system and the immigration system. I stood next to him as he explained to a judge what had brought him to this point in his life. Despite his best efforts to be strong and brave, the moment finally got to him and in the middle of testifying he broke down and began to cry. I’ll never know if it was the pain of having to relive everything he had been through to get out of that terrible situation, or the relief that it was finally over that did it. I do know, however, that in that moment I was as happy as I have ever been to be an attorney.
My client is one of the lucky individuals, not because he had me as an attorney but because he had any attorney at all. My client was one of the thousands of children who entered the United States during the flood of undocumented children in 2014. Of those children, only 32% were represented by counsel.[1] To put this issue in perspective, of the children who were represented by counsel, approximately 73% were allowed to stay in the United States compared to only 15% for children who are unrepresented.[2]
When I work on a case on Mostyn Law, I genuinely believe I am helping people. However, nothing I do will ever compare with standing in that Court room as the Judge announced that my client could stay in the United States. In that singular moment, I knew that all the work I had put into the case along with the countless other individuals who had helped me, was done not so the firm or even my client could get money. Rather the work was done so that this young man who had not done anything wrong could have an opportunity to live with the only person who could support him. I knew that all the work we had done had given him a chance to lift himself up and escape from a life of abandonment and violence. I knew that the work we had done was truly for good.
For more information, please call Mostyn Law at 713-714-000 or visit mostynlaw.com.
[1] See, Transactional Records Clearinghouse, Representation for Unaccompanied Children in Immigration Court, Nov. 25, 2014.
[2] Id.
