This article is part of National Law Journal's 2018 Pro Bono Hot List recognition package that celebrates law firms that do well by doing good. See the other stories here.

At a dreary detention facility in Laredo, Texas, women who've fled violence in Central America recount horrific stories of persecution and abuse with their best source of hope: lawyers from Jones Day who rotate in weekly to give the refugees free legal advice and services.

These teams of litigation, tax and corporate lawyers, 500 in all, now schooled in immigration law, run the innovative pro bono Laredo Project, launched in March 2017 to educate female detainees about the asylum process and, often, represent them in court.

“They have suffered horrendously in their home countries at the hands of criminal gangs or abusive domestic partners,” says David DiMeglio, a partner in the Los Angeles office and project co-leader. “Many of these cases truly are life-or-death situations.”

Jones Day, firm leaders say, is the first law firm to establish a full-time presence at any federal detention facility, opening an office in a nearby historic hotel overlooking the Rio Grande.

“No law firm has ever undertaken a project of this scope and approach in a detention facility,” DiMeglio said, adding that the Laredo facility houses 300 refugees at any given time.

To date, Jones Day attorneys have met with over 1,400 detainees to evaluate their cases for full representation. Of those, the firm has represented more than 200 detainees as clients, completed 11 expedited trials in detention and obtained release of over 130 pending trial.

Previously, these detainees had virtually no access to free legal services. Now they attend “Know Your Rights” presentations in Spanish and learn to tell their stories coherently for “credible fear” interviews with asylum officers.

“Before I met the lawyers, the deportation officer in Laredo was always pressuring me to sign my deportation order,” said Sandra B., 40, a domestic violence survivor from El Salvador. Jones Day, however, “moved heaven and earth” to secure victory in her case. “If I'd been forced to return to El Salvador, there's no doubt my former partner would have murdered me.”

In 2017, Jones Day devoted 172,063 hours of pro bono, including 43,222 to Laredo detainees.

Immigration is one of several firmwide pro bono initiatives pursued at the firm, said Washington, D.C.-based Laura Tuell, Jones Day's firmwide head of pro bono. Other matters have included work on human trafficking and work that benefits veterans. “Each has a fundamental theme of access to counsel and the rule of law,” she said.

Mary Meg McCarthy, executive director of the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago, which partners with Jones Day, said the firm's “commitment to ensuring due process and upholding the rule of law is simply incredible.”

“You can tell there's hope in the eyes of the people that they're serving,” McCarthy said. “There's hope.”