Immigrants in Boulder and around Colorado are living in constant fear.

They’re afraid to go to their immigration hearings, but they’re also afraid to go out in public in general, said Hunter Parnell, a University of Colorado Law School student. They’re afraid of “everything you can imagine.”

“There’s no guarantee that even people who have done things the right way and are protected will be protected,” Parnell said.

Parnell is a law student on the Boulder campus who worked in the university’s Immigration Clinic and represented clients in court last year. The clinic has offered free immigration legal services to clients at CU Boulder, in Boulder County and across the state since 2012.

Since President Donald Trump took office, Trump has pursued an agenda focused on mass deportations, ICE raids and new immigration restrictions. Parnell said the two biggest changes with the presidential transition have been increased fear in clients and more unknowns for lawyers.

“The system has always been relatively cruel and inconsistent and random, but the cruelty has been ratcheted up and everything’s been taken to its maximum,” Parnell said.

This academic year, there are 12 CU law students working in the clinic who are each handling three to four cases at a time.

“We try to help as many people as we can while understanding that ethically that we can only handle the number of cases that we can, especially because the students … are also learning at the same time,” said Violeta Chapin, the CU law professor who runs the Immigration Clinic.

Undocumented CU students

The Immigration Clinic represents a wide variety of clients, Chapin said. Some of their clients are undocumented CU Boulder students. Many of the undocumented students are DACA recipients, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a status that provides protection from deportation to those who arrived in the United States as children. The students may seek out the clinic’s help renewing their DACA status or getting citizenship.

Chapin said a lot of undocumented students at CU Boulder are worried that Trump will end the DACA program, which he tried to do during his first presidency.

There have been several undocumented students who have come through law school and are now undocumented lawyers, she said. Undocumented students can enroll in college and public schools but cannot access federal loans.

“Should they lose their work authorization, they would of course lose their livelihood, but they would also abruptly lose protection from removal,” Chapin said.

The clinic also represents immigrants seeking to adjust their status after being in the United States for many years, Chapin said, and represents children who come to the United States alone. It also represents asylum seekers, which are immigrants who are fleeing persecution and seeking safety by coming to the United States.

The clinic often finds clients through word of mouth, as Chapin has been teaching the clinic for more than a decade. The clinic is also on a contact list at the detention center in Aurora, and nonprofit organizations like the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network will also refer cases to the clinic.

Since Trump took office, Chapin said, a lot of time has been spent comforting clients, standing up for them, supporting them and navigating a changing legal landscape as they try to access legal protections.

“Most palpably it’s felt by our clients who are experiencing a tremendous amount of fear and anxiety as they navigate an immigration system that’s always been challenging to access but now feels very unpredictable and hostile,” Chapin said.

Another fear clients face is of expedited removal, meaning if someone has arrived in the U.S. in the past two years and is arrested by immigration agents, they can be deported without seeing a judge.

“Those efforts and the goal of this administration to circumvent the legal system is something that is really terrifying,” Chapin said.

The university provided the clinic with funding to hire a staff attorney that will allow it to help more clients, teach more students, handle more cases and keep the clinic open in the summer, after Chapin told CU she’d like to be able to better support CU Boulder’s immigrant community, especially noncitizen staff. The university said it does not track data on the number of documented and undocumented students and employees it has on campus.

Many immigrants in the CU and Boulder community are eligible for immigration benefits, Chapin said, but haven’t accessed it due to financial barriers or institutional barriers.

“I also believe very strongly in due process and making sure that anyone, regardless of how long they’ve lived in our community, even if they just joined us last week or last month or last year, if they have a viable legal claim they should get the chance to make it, and attorneys can help people do that,” Chapin said.

High demand for services

Law schools clinics allow second and third year law school students to start working on cases and representing clients in court under the supervision of faculty. The CU Law School has nine clinics, covering everything from environmental law to family law to technology law.

Immigration law is a civil system, so someone without documentation or someone who is trying to change their immigration status will go through civil courts. But, federal law doesn’t require a public defender or court appointed lawyer for immigration cases like it does for criminal cases.

Chapin said a lot of immigrants have to hire a lawyer, which can be financially burdensome, or navigate the system by themselves.

“Our clinic tries to fill that gap because we provide free legal services,” she said.

The clinic’s services are free because the students who run the clinic are earning credit toward their degree and the supervising faculty are paid by the law school.

Demand has always been high for the clinic’s services, Chapin said, now and before Trump took office. When the clinic can’t accept a client, Chapin refers the client to nonprofit organizations or other practicing immigration attorneys.

There are about 14 million undocumented people living in the United States as of 2023, according to the Pew Research Center, with early data showing growth has continued in 2024 and 2025.

“That’s a lot of people, and all of them in one way, shape or form, could likely benefit from talking to a lawyer, it’s just that most of them can’t access it,” Chapin said.

The dismissal of due process and immigrant rights is something everyone should care about, said Parnell, now a third year law student at CU Boulder.

“These precedents, they don’t just stay in immigration law,” Parnell said. “They will inevitably come into other parts of our legal system and it will (affect) everybody in the country. So it is vitally important to care about what happens to immigrant populations, whether they are here lawfully or not.”