Anderson H. came to this country from Honduras at age seven, in 2006, after seeing two uncles and an aunt slain in retaliation for his grandfather’s opposition to gang activity. Paradoxically, hostility to gangs in this country made asylum a long shot for Anderson.
Undeterred, Reed Smith took his case to immigration court in San Francisco and flew in an antigang specialist from a Honduran nonprofit. The expert testified that 600 Hondurans had died in gang violence the prior year. Anderson won his case for asylum. “There’s nothing like hearing a Central American witness describe the horrors he witnesses in daily life to persuade a judge,” says Anderson’s lawyer Jayne Fleming.
Since 2007 Reed Smith has a perfect record in its advocacy for refugees from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala–winning asylum for seven people, as well as visas for two victims of domestic violence and special immigrant status for four abandoned children. According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, the average asylum grant rate for those nationalities in 2007 and 2008 was a mere 2.3 percent.
Reed Smith “takes cases that are unwinnable and they win them,” says Lisa Frydman, managing attorney of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies in San Francisco.
