When Morgan, Lewis & Bockius agreed to represent immigrant families seeking a court order releasing them from detention facilities due to COVID-19, senior pro bono trial attorney Susan Baker Manning found herself jumping into the litigation as it was already speeding along.

The motion for a temporary restraining order in the class-action lawsuit was already filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and the Morgan Lewis team was tasked with the bulk of the work in drafting the reply brief. The same day the brief was filed, Manning was among the attorneys on the phone arguing for the motion.

It's not the only challenge to detained immigrants' living conditions, as lawyers allege in federal court in California that not protecting detained immigrant children from the virus violates the terms of the 1990s-era Flores Settlement, which sets the conditions for the treatment of detained immigrant minors. U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee found this week that conditions caused by the pandemic violated the settlement, and gave the government until April 6 to lay out how it is protecting detained children and why they should not be released.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in D.C. heard phone arguments for the TRO earlier this week, and extended Gee's order to include detained immigrant parents. The immigrant families were also represented by attorneys with RAICES, Aldea – the People's Justice Center, and the Rapid Defense Network.

Manning, who was named to the new pro bono position in January 2019, and another solo practitioner and immigration attorney on the case, Amy Maldonado, spoke with The National Law Journal about what it's like to seek a TRO during a pandemic, and the importance of pro bono work during a health crisis. Answers are edited for length and clarity.

Q: How did this specific lawsuit in D.C., as well as the legal team behind it, come together?

Amy Maldonado: There are three family detention centers, and there are different nonprofits that work with each detention center. It's a small community and we all know each other. So, when we realized the extent of this pandemic and how dangerous it was, we immediately rushed to take action. It was clear that [Immigration Customs Enforcement] was not taking precautions, and that there was not very much concern being shown to the detainees.

We spent probably two days around the clock drafting the complaint, which we got filed at 10:30 p.m. last Saturday. We're all small organizations, except RAICES, so resources are limited and Susan Baker Manning and the whole pro bono team at Morgan Lewis got on board to advocate and to do all of the heavy lifting on the TRO reply brief, which we really appreciate.

Q: How receptive was Judge Boasberg during those phone arguments to the concerns being raised about the treatment of detained immigrant families during this pandemic?

AM: He was clearly concerned, and he echoed Judge Gee's concerns. Gee didn't even discuss the pandemic at her TRO hearing. She said, we're not in court because of this pandemic, the court is closed because we all know this is dangerous, let's move on.

Judge Boasberg seemed concerned about setting broad precedents. And he was concerned about making sure he was being respectful of Judge Gee's class of relief and what she was doing, but also designing limited relief for this particular group of people. His final order was basically to extend Judge Gee's order from the children and include the parents.

Susan Baker Manning: Extending the order to protect the parents as well as the children is a really important movement here to protect those families, and I think the judge understood how important it was that families are protected.

AM: Bridget Cambria of Aldea, Gregory Copeland and Sarah Gillman of Rapid Defense Network and I, and our pro bono counsel from Greenberg Traurig and Pepper Hamilton, we've been representing a father and daughter in detention since last June. We filed two separate court cases and two separate appeals for them, and this family won everything at the appellate level. And they would not let them out. They let them out about 15 minutes ago. And the ICE counsel specifically referenced Judge Boasberg's order, so we know it was because of yesterday's order.

Q: Different legal challenges are playing out in federal court in response to the coronavirus about inmates or detained immigrants. Why do you think it's important to be taking on these cases, and getting swift orders from federal judges that can impact living conditions for people during a health crisis?

AM: We're seeing courts around the country let go of medically vulnerable prisoners who are in prisons and jails. We watched the Berks County Jail empty out and it's across the street from where our parents and children are being held. In order to be placed in family detention, you have to be determined to be not a risk. All of these families have no criminal record, they're safe families, that's why their kids are still with them

Continuing to detain these families causes a risk to public health, it's a risk to ICE employees, it's a risk to facility employees and it's a risk to these families and children who are seeking protection from persecution and torture in this country.

Q: Susan, you've been in your role for a little over a year now at Morgan Lewis. How exactly do you think being in this position is helping you and the firm do pro bono work during this pandemic? Do you feel like it's made you more prepared to take on cases for those who may be more vulnerable and need this kind of legal assistance during this time?

SBM: My role working as a senior pro bono trial attorney is to lead our impact practice and to be able to bring the partner level of attention and focus on that aspect of our pro bono program that makes it possible to take on the largest and most pressing matters. This case is an excellent example of it, a TRO case where we came in after the motion for a TRO had been filed. It's very hard to drop everything and take on these largest, significant, most pressing pro bono matters, if you don't have somebody who's focusing on it. That's my role, and I think it makes it possible for us to do more significant work in this space.

Q: Are you currently working on any other pro bono cases tied to the pandemic or anticipate taking on any future challenges?

SBM: We're doing a number of COVID-19-related matters, including looking at habeas petitions for persons who are uniquely vulnerable. We are doing a number of pro bono matters where we are advising our nonprofit clients, whose organizations may move very quickly in light of the crisis. We are giving our pro bono and commercial clients all sorts of advice: Tax advice, employment advice, restructuring advice.

Q: Obviously the pandemic is raising a number of legal issues, and like you mentioned Susan, it's creating a lot of shake-up within the legal industry. So is it presenting any issues for you on the back end in working on this case? 

SBM: We have been able to transition to this remote work effort pretty seamlessly. Being in the office to working remotely full time certainly is a huge change for our teams. Our IT folks, our staff who are still in the office, they are doing incredible work to help us make that happen so that we can move forward without a blip. I have to say that has been remarkably successful. I have done three major filings in the last week with entirely remote teams, and it has gone off without a hitch. That ability at Morgan Lewis to allow us to pivot like that is incredibly important to be able to serve our clients and help the kids in this case.

AM: I think we're all very grateful that we have access to all the technology we do. When we drafted the original petition we did it from our homes in New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Texas. Everybody did a ton of work and we could not have done this without the technological age that we live in. And it's also kind of kept us from going crazy, I think.

SBM: It wasn't entirely clear to me where the judge, the courtroom deputy, the court reporter and everybody else was during arguments. I assumed they too were all remote. But doing a telephonic hearing with the court, that the court was able to make itself available in the midst of a pandemic—the fact we're able to do that fairly seamlessly is remarkable. It's quite different to argue a telephonic hearing than arguing live, where you can respond to the judge and respond to the opposing counsel in a different way. But it's remarkable the way we were able to move forward.