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.