SCR 20:6.1 states: “Every lawyer has a professional responsibility to provide legal services to those unable to pay. A lawyer should aspire to render at least 50 hours of pro bono publico legal services per year.”
The second Trump administration brought an intense and seemingly indiscriminate attack on U.S. immigrants. By January 2026, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had rewritten policies and begun advocating for interpretations of law that contradicted decades of precedent.
Thousands of people, including children and legal residents, were detained in inhumane conditions and deported without due process. Renee Good and Alex Pretti became household names.
And, it seemed, there was nothing that I could do.
Connecting with Experts
Over the last winter, during the fever pitch of the ICE crackdown in Minneapolis, I had lunch with my friend, Elisabeth Lambert of
Wisconsin Education Law & Policy Hub, a firm that advocates for student rights and fair school board policies.
Chris Donahoe, Washington University 2013, is a shareholder with
Hawks Quindel S.C., Milwaukee. She focuses on employment discrimination, employment law, and sexual harassment.
All statements or expressions of opinion in InsideTrack Weekly, and other publications, are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the State Bar or State Bar editors. Due to the rapidly changing nature of the law, information contained in these publications may become outdated.
She told me that she had recently taken on a habeas[1] case on behalf of an ICE detainee. Elisabeth is not an immigration attorney and, as far as I knew, had never filed a habeas action. It turns out that for months she had been partnering with Gabriela Parra, an experienced immigration attorney at
Layde & Parra, S.C. on a couple of immigration-related matters.
With Elisabeth’s experience in federal litigation and Gabriela’s experience in immigration court, they had the competence to challenge some of the novel and confounding ICE actions. And they were making some headway.
I had never filed a habeas action and knew nothing about immigration law. My expertise is in representing workers facing employment discrimination. I have experience in an array of other civil rights issues, but never had an immigration case crossed my desk. Regardless, Elisabeth’s encouragement and my enthusiasm got the best of me, and before I knew it, I was asking how I could get involved.
Soon thereafter, I was connected with a group of attorneys doing this work: some who are expert practitioners in immigration law, including the attorneys at the
Community Immigration Law Center in Madison, and some of them federal court litigators with no immigration experience, like myself.
The Community Immigration Law Center had a system in place to identify detainees with viable habeas claims. There were more cases than they could handle, though, and they needed private attorneys to take some cases pro bono.
Diving in Headfirst
In March 2026, I heard from the Community Immigration Law Center that they knew of a person being detained by ICE who had a viable habeas claim.
I hopped on the phone with Kate Frigo Drury, one of their immigration and criminal defense attorneys, who had been representing this client for the prior eight months. She filled me in on the issues and committed to providing the substantive law expertise that I needed. I called on another friend, Daniel Narvey, who had interest in the cause, and he agreed to co-counsel.
By early April, we were ready to file the petition. Being new to the area of law, Daniel and I spent a lot of time researching and talking through the issues with Kate.[2] And among the three of us, we had the competency we needed.
In July, we won the habeas action.
Despite this win, we faced a setback in immigration court, and our client is still detained. Litigation is ongoing, which shows the complexity of the legal challenges that immigrants, many without lawyers, are facing today.
My Message to You
Despite my individual
inexperience, I provided competent and effective representation for a client in need. I got to learn from other attorneys, research new issues, build confidence, and help close the justice gap here in Wisconsin.
You too should step out of your comfort zone and take on a pro bono case outside of your practice area – it is simply a matter of consulting with experts, doing some research, and recruiting your friends to help.
The State Bar offers a way to get started.
This article was originally published on the State Bar of Wisconsin’s
Civil Rights & Liberties Blog of the Civil Rights & Liberties Section. Visit the State Bar
sections or the
Civil Rights & Liberties Section webpages to learn more about the benefits of section membership.
Endnotes
[1] A petition for habeas corpus is a request to a federal court to release a person from illegal restraint or confinement.
See 28 U.S.C. Chapter 153 Part VI.↩
[2] I spent about 50 hours on the case through the initial ruling.↩
