Pablo López sat on the small balcony of an apartment in a Walnut Creek housing complex, dialing phone numbers for legal aid groups across the Bay Area.
Just above his head, the freshly washed Chick-fil-A uniforms of his housemates were hanging to dry. He was focused on a printed list of nonprofit legal service groups and private immigration attorneys, hoping that one of them might help him make his case for asylum in the United States.
He doesn’t have long to find an attorney because his case falls under the expedited asylum process created in May by the Biden administration for recently arrived families. The aim of the so-called “dedicated docket” is to resolve asylum cases more quickly, with a loose goal of a judge issuing a decision within 300 days of the initial court appearance.
It’s an effort to prevent such cases from slipping into an immigration court backlog that recently surpassed 1.5 million cases.
“Families who have recently arrived should not languish in a multiyear backlog,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas when the program was launched.
But without legal help, López and thousands like him must navigate an unfamiliar system on their own — and face deportation if they fail.
The two-bedroom apartment in Walnut Creek is the home of an old friend from Nicaragua. López and his 12-year-old son have been bunking in the living room since they arrived in July. The guest room is occupied by a family of four who also fled political violence in Nicaragua last summer.
López said he and his son abruptly left their town in the Nicaraguan mountains after local government officials came to his house and tried to strong-arm him into working for the reelection campaign of President Daniel Ortega, flashing a gun and threatening to kill him if he resisted.
“In the next town over, they beat people up and took them away, and nobody knew where they’d gone,” said López, speaking in Spanish, of Ortega’s supporters.
We’re using a variation on his name to protect his identity because he fears for his family’s safety — and his own if he were forced to return to Nicaragua.
López, 37, said he was never involved in politics. Instead, he worked in construction to support his parents, his wife and two kids.
He wishes he could send money home to the wife and toddler he had to leave behind, but the cash he earns from odd jobs is just enough to feed him and his son. He said his wife tells him she and their daughter are fine, but he’s not convinced. Ortega’s supporters have been asking his family and his neighbors about his whereabouts.
The journey north took a month, and López and his son traveled much of it on foot, resting in migrant shelters when they could find them.
