It was the winter of 2023, and Maureen Graves was looking for a way to help the thousands of migrants who had been bused to Chicago. “I was freaked out sleeping in my warm bed watching people sleep in tents,” she says. She showed up at police stations with coats and blankets and started getting to know some of the families camped out there. A longtime special education lawyer with no experience practicing immigration law, she hadn’t necessarily intended to tap her legal expertise. But she ended up helping a person on the verge of missing their deadline to file for asylum. A few months later, she helped another. And then another. “It’s just very hard to say no to people who do not have alternatives,” Graves, 68, says. 

Nearly three years later, as Chicago has become ground zero of a federal anti-immigration blitz, Graves is now an indispensable ally to those caught in the crosshairs. After obtaining a license to practice immigration law, she opened a South Side legal clinic, and by the start of this year, she had made it a full-time operation, relying on a team of volunteers. The majority of asylum seekers are from Venezuela, but the clinic has also helped Ecuadorians, Nicaraguans, Mexicans, and others. (Graves speaks fluent Spanish and some Chinese.) Her clients tell stories of government extortion and torture. Some are gay, putting them at risk of violence. Others are former members of their nation’s military who quit when they were ordered to harm civilians.

She shows up at the clinic at 8 a.m. and often doesn’t leave before 10 p.m. She eats at her desk. She tries to take Sundays off but usually doesn’t. Her efforts have made a difference to those with nowhere else to turn. Since January, the clinic has processed some 500 asylum cases, Graves estimates.

“I never wanted to start any kind of immigration law practice,” she says, “much less a substantial one.” But she can’t ignore what’s happening: “It’s been shocking to see people who are trying to do everything legally go to court and get picked up in court, go to their ICE check-ins and get picked up at an ICE check-in. [The feds] are basically doing the opposite of going after the worst of the worst. They’re going after the most law-abiding people.” Graves, meanwhile, will keep doing her part to try to balance the scales of justice.