‘We’re Constantly Putting Out Fires’

A surprise email from a close high school friend hit Michelle Saenz-Rodriguez’s inbox when she was just three years into her immigration law practice, and it’s stayed with her. 

“I want you to know how proud I am of the work you do,” the email read. “I never had the guts to tell you I was undocumented.”

Suddenly, memories of cheerleading and shared family trips became something deeper. “We’d lived seven miles from the Mexican border, but I never looked at my schoolmates or friends as anything other than that,” Saenz-Rodriguez says. “I had zero clue that many of them might have been undocumented. It made me realize just how oblivious I’d been to immigration.”  

Now 35 years into the practice she shares with her husband, George Rodriguez, and one year into the second Trump administration, she is feeling the importance of her work more than ever. “Before, nobody even knew who immigration lawyers were,” Saenz-Rodriguez says. “Now, everybody knows what we do.”

Growing up in the Rio Grande Valley, Saenz-Rodriguez seemed destined for law; her mother once told her she liked to argue a lot, and she competed on her high school’s debate team. 

But it would be years before she decided to focus on immigration. Fresh out of law school in Lansing, Michigan, Saenz-Rodriguez was accepted into the Attorney General’s Honors Program, for which she spent a year working at an immigration court in Harlingen, Texas. “I was fascinated by the law itself,” Saenz-Rodriguez says, noting that she would listen to cassette tapes and write up decisions. “Immigration statutes are comparable to the tax codes in their complexity, and you have to figure out how to navigate them.”

She’d met her future husband earlier, through volunteer work during law school. While Saenz-Rodriguez was working at a personal injury firm in Dallas, and George was graduating from law school, they decided to open an immigration firm together. Saenz-Rodriguez & Associates was born.

A large part of their work is devoted to defending immigrants facing deportation. For years, the work was often administrative: The couple would plan a naturalization pathway for immigrants who were seeking asylum; or undocumented adults who were brought into the country as children; or immigrants reuniting with a U.S. family member. 

Then Trump’s second term began.

“Our entire practice has now shifted into a crisis-driven mode. We’re constantly putting out fires,” Saenz-Rodriguez says.

While she notes that immigration laws haven’t changed in 20 years, how they are interpreted has. Federal judges have always had the discretion to decide whether an immigrant is released on bond or detained, pending a hearing to determine their legal status. In the past, immigrants were almost always bonded. Now, most are detained—and judges who don’t do so have been, she says, fired.

“It’s completely changed our legal strategy,” says Saenz-Rodriguez. “Pretty much everyone is jailed until their case is completed, which could be weeks, months or years.”

And because immigration cases are heard in a civil court, the individuals have no right to an attorney. Instead, they must often defend themselves. “There are toddlers in removal proceedings,” Saenz-Rodriguez says. “There’s nothing more daunting than to see a judge literally talking to a 3-year-old, saying, ‘Do you understand you’re in deportation proceedings, and you have the right to defend your case?’”

In a recent case, Saenz-Rodriguez had a client who had been living in the United States for 20 years with a clean record, and was the breadwinner for two disabled children born in this country. The judge ordered his deportation, saying the family didn’t meet the required level of hardship, and the case is currently up on appeal.

Saenz-Rodriguez isn’t used to these sorts of outcomes.

“You’d think this is what our country is for. This is the exact picture of a humanitarian case where you’d say, ‘Yeah, we’re going to let this person stay, because he’s been contributing to this country. And there is no other option for the family.’”

She adds: “I often wake up after all the years of practicing law and say, ‘If not us, then who?’ People would be left without representation—and that’s not a viable option.”

Green Acres

Four years ago, Saenz-Rodriguez and her husband bought a 7-acre farm just outside of Dallas. Now, when they get home, the couple feeds their three horses, two goats, 11 chickens and two dogs. 

Saenz-Rodriguez even bales hay and climbs fences wearing gloves to protect her nails. “My chickens know their names, and they come running when I get home,” she says “It’s a part of our life we’ve really come to enjoy, especially when things are so heavy.”