What I Tell My Clients Before Something Happens
Arzoo Connor • April 9, 2026
A practical guide to emergency preparedness from an immigration attorney who has been through the process herself
I don’t walk my clients through emergency preparedness to scare them. I do it because the families who have a plan make better decisions when something actually happens. And right now, not having a plan is not a neutral choice.
Panic is the enemy of good decisions. So let’s go through some things you can do right now, most of them free, most of them taking less than an hour, that could make an enormous difference if ICE shows up at your door, if someone in your family gets detained, or if your situation changes suddenly.
This is not legal advice specific to your case. But it is what I walk my clients through, and if you work with this community in any capacity, please share it.
Know the difference between a warrant, and actually know it
There are two types of warrants: an ICE administrative warrant and a judicial warrant signed by a judge.
An administrative warrant does not give anyone the right to enter your home. Only a judge-signed warrant does.
You can ask to see it through a closed window or a closed door before you open anything. You do not have to open the door to find out. Ask them to hold it up. A judicial warrant will be signed by a judge and list your address specifically. An administrative warrant will not.
This one piece of knowledge has changed outcomes for people.
Do not sign anything on the spot
If someone in your family is detained, ICE may present paperwork. One of the most common documents is a voluntary departure form. It sounds harmless. It is not harmless.
Signing can waive rights you did not even know you had. Once you have signed, it is very hard to undo, and in some cases you cannot undo it at all.
You have the right to speak with an attorney before you sign anything. Say nothing, sign nothing, until you have spoken to someone who can explain what you are agreeing to.
Silence is not the same as lying, and lying is a whole separate problem
You have the right to remain silent. You do not have to answer questions about where you were born, your immigration status, or anything else. You can say, “I want to speak with an attorney,” and leave it there.
But I want to be very clear about this: lying to a federal officer creates a separate legal problem on top of your immigration situation. It can be charged as a federal crime. It gives them something to use against you that did not exist before.
Stay silent if you need to. But do not say something false.
Know your A-number and write it down
Your Alien Registration Number is the number that identifies you in the immigration system. If someone in your family is detained, that number is what your attorney needs to locate them, check their status, and file anything on their behalf.
Do not assume you will have access to your documents when you need that number. Write it down. Put it on that physical card in your wallet. Make sure your emergency contact has it too.
In Texas, you can record. Know the law where you live.
Texas is a one-party consent state. That means you can record a law enforcement interaction without the other person’s consent, as long as you are a party to it.
If it is safe to do so, that recording can matter later. It can corroborate what happened. It can counter a false report.
Check the recording laws in your specific state before you need to know them.
Your rights are different depending on where you are
At home, you have stronger protections. You do not have to open the door without a valid judicial warrant.
On the street or in a public place, the rules are different. You still have the right to remain silent and the right to refuse a search of your belongings, but you cannot walk away if an officer says you are being detained. Ask clearly: “Am I being detained or am I free to go?” If you are free to go, calmly leave.
In a car, if you are stopped, you are required to provide your driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance. You are not required to answer questions about your immigration status. Passengers are not required to show ID in most states, though Texas has some specific rules around this, so it is worth knowing your situation in advance.
Knowing where you are changes what applies to you.
Consular contact: know when it helps and when it does not
Under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, US authorities are required to inform a detained foreign national of their right to contact their home country’s consulate. For most nationalities this means you have to ask for it. For nationals of certain countries that have bilateral agreements with the US, notification to the consulate is mandatory regardless of whether the person requests it. If you are detained and want consular contact, say so clearly: “I want to contact my consulate.”
That said, this is not the right move for everyone, and I want to be direct about that.
If you are an asylum seeker or a refugee, or if you fled your home country because of danger, contacting your home government’s consulate can put you and your family at risk. Your home country does not need to know where you are or that you have been detained. In that situation, do not request consular contact. Tell your attorney first and let them advise you.
It is also worth knowing that enforcement of this right is inconsistent. Courts have generally not allowed violations of consular notification rules to suppress evidence or reverse convictions, so the practical remedy when it is ignored is limited. That does not mean you should not assert it if it applies to your situation. It means you should not count on it as a primary protection. It is one tool, not a guaranteed safeguard.
If you are unsure whether consular contact would help or hurt your specific situation, that is exactly the kind of question to bring to an immigration attorney before something happens.
Have a power of attorney prepared before you need one
If a parent is detained and cannot manage their own affairs, someone needs legal authority to act on their behalf. Pay rent. Access bank accounts. Make decisions for the kids.
A power of attorney gives a trusted person that authority. It has to be prepared and signed before something happens. You cannot do it from a detention facility after the fact.
Talk to an attorney about getting this set up. It is not expensive, and it gives your family options.
The documents need to be somewhere other than your house
If someone is detained and taken from the home, and the documents are inside the home, getting to those documents becomes a problem for the people trying to help you.
Keep copies of your tax returns, lease agreements, birth certificates, your children’s school records somewhere outside your home that a trusted person can physically reach. A family member’s house. A safe deposit box. Somewhere.
The documents cannot help you if no one can get to them.
Make a plan for your kids, and get the right documents in place
US citizen children cannot be deported. But if a parent is detained, someone needs to be legally authorized to take care of them. A verbal agreement with a grandparent or a family friend means nothing in the eyes of a school, a doctor, or a court. Without the right paperwork in place, a well-meaning family member has zero legal authority, and a child can end up in foster care while their parent is fighting their case from a detention facility. That is the outcome everyone wants to avoid, and it is entirely preventable.
There are three documents worth knowing about:
- Standby Guardianship Designation
is the most important one for this specific situation. It names a guardian for your children that takes effect automatically when a triggering event happens, like detention, deportation, or incapacitation. The parent does not have to be deceased for it to kick in. In Texas this is governed under the Texas Estates Code, and it is specifically designed for situations where a parent becomes suddenly unavailable. This is the document that keeps children out of the child welfare system while a parent’s case is being resolved.
- Parental Power of Attorney for Child Care
is more immediately usable and does not require going through a court. You sign it now, and it authorizes the person you name to make medical decisions, enroll a child in school, consent to treatment, and handle day-to-day decisions. It does not wait for a triggering event. It is active the moment it is signed. In Texas this falls under the Family Code.
- Caregiver Authorization Affidavit
is a simpler option if a non-parent relative, a grandparent, aunt, or uncle, needs authority to handle day-to-day decisions for a child without going through a full legal process. Texas has a version of this under the Family Code as well.
These are not complicated documents and they are not expensive to prepare. But they have to be done before something happens. That is the part people keep putting off, and it is the part that matters most.
Make sure your children’s school also has written pickup authorization on file, not just a verbal conversation with a teacher. On file. Updated whenever anything changes.
If your children are old enough, talk to them about what to do and who to call. Keep it calm. Keep it factual. A child who knows the plan is a child who can actually help when it counts.
A physical card in your wallet, not just your phone
Phones get taken. Phones die. Phones get locked.
Keep a physical card in your wallet with your attorney’s number and an emergency contact’s number. Old fashioned, but it works.
Turn on location sharing with one trusted person. If someone is picked up and cannot communicate, knowing their last location matters.
Come talk to someone before there is an emergency
A lot of people in this situation have never had anyone sit down and walk them through their options. Not because they did not care, but because no one ever took the time.
Come in and talk. Even if we cannot help you, we will tell you that directly and explain why. You deserve to understand where you stand before something forces the question.
Arzoo Connor is a licensed immigration and estate planning attorney and the founder of ARC Legal Services in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. She is a former JAG officer and an immigrant herself. Every person in her office has personally been through the immigration process.
If you have questions about your specific situation, call the office (469) 200-0158.
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I want to tell you about a case that still sits with me. I am going to protect my client's identity because her safety matters more than any story I could tell. But I am sharing this because there are women out there right now in situations just like hers, and most of them believe no one can help them. I want them to know that is not true. Where Her Story Started She came to this country years ago, hoping for a better life. She had already been through more than most people face in a lifetime. Married at the young age of 15 in her home country, she had three children. Two of them have autism and require extra support every single day. The youngest was extremely close to his father, who passed away. After her husband died, she was devastated. She was raising three children alone, two of them with significant needs, and she was grieving deeply. It was in that vulnerable place that she met someone new. He presented himself as a support system. He pursued her. What she did not know was that he was manipulating her from the start. She became pregnant. They had a child together. And then, once that baby arrived, everything changed. He cheated on her. He became verbally and physically abusive. She tried to leave him. On the night she finally attempted to end the relationship, he called the police and told them a story that was not true. He presented himself as the victim. He was calm, articulate, and looked like a devoted father. She was the one who ended up being detained. Because she was not in the country lawfully, that night did not end with her going home to her children. It ended with her in immigration detention. What Nobody Told Her Here is something most people do not know, including many immigration attorneys. You do not have to be in the country legally to be protected under the Violence Against Women Act. VAWA exists specifically for situations like hers. It was designed to protect immigrant survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and abuse, including people who are undocumented, because Congress understood that abusers frequently use immigration status as a weapon. They threaten to call the police. They threaten deportation. They use their partner's fear of the system to keep them trapped. That is exactly what happened here. And it is why I took this case. What the Case Actually Looked Like I want to be honest about something. This was not a clean, simple case with months to prepare. I had two weeks. Two weeks to gather evidence, work through the domestic violence charges that had been filed against her the night she tried to leave, coordinate with a criminal attorney to have those charges addressed, locate witnesses, and build a full immigration trial case from scratch. Then I walked into that immigration courtroom and the judge gave me 60 minutes. 60 minutes to present an entire VAWA defense, put four witnesses on the stand, and ask a judge to release a mother back to her children. 60 minutes. I am not telling you this so you feel sorry for me. I am telling you this so you understand what these cases actually look like. The people who end up in this situation rarely have time on their side. The system does not slow down because the facts are complicated. You either show up ready or your client loses. What We Had to Prove A VAWA defense in immigration court requires showing several things. You have to establish that abuse occurred. You have to show that the person facing deportation was the victim, not the perpetrator. And you have to do all of this against someone who, in this case, had already successfully convinced law enforcement, prosecutors, and other attorneys that he was the one who had been wronged. He was good at it. I will give him that. My job was to show who she actually was. A mother. A woman who had already survived an enormous amount of loss before this man ever entered her picture. A person who had done nothing wrong except trust someone who exploited that trust at the worst possible moment in her life. We worked with a criminal attorney to address the charges that had been filed against her. Getting those handled was critical to building the immigration case. This is something I see all the time -- a criminal charge that looks minor on its face becomes the thing that closes every immigration door. You cannot ignore one side of a case and expect the other side to succeed. Then we built the VAWA case. Witness by witness. Document by document. All of it pulled together in two weeks. What Happened in That Courtroom I put four witnesses on in 60 minutes. I presented evidence of abuse. I told her story clearly and completely and I let the facts speak. The judge ruled in her favor. She went home to her children. I am not going to pretend that every case ends this way. They do not. I have lost cases that I believed in completely, and those losses follow you. But this one ended the way it should have ended, and I think about it when cases feel impossible. What I Want You to Take From This If you are a woman in an abusive situation and you are afraid that your immigration status means you have no options, please read this carefully. Your status does not disqualify you from protection. It does not mean you have to stay with someone who is hurting you to avoid deportation. It does not mean the courts will automatically side with a citizen or a person with papers over you. There are legal tools designed specifically for your situation. VAWA is one of them. The U-Visa is another. What determines whether you can use them is not your immigration status. It is the facts of what happened to you and whether you have an attorney who knows how to present them. What I would also say is this: if you are in an abusive relationship and your partner has ever threatened to call immigration on you, or has used your status to control you, that threat itself is evidence of abuse. Document it. Write it down. Tell someone you trust. And call an attorney before anything is filed. Before you accept any plea deal. Before you sign anything. The moment criminal charges or immigration proceedings begin, the clock starts moving, and in this world it moves fast. A Note on VAWA and the U-Visa People often ask me what the difference is between these two forms of relief. The short answer is this, VAWA is for survivors whose abuser is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident, and the relationship must be a qualifying one -- spouse, parent, or child. It allows you to petition for immigration status on your own, without involving your abuser in the process at all. The U-Visa applies to a broader range of situations. It covers survivors of many types of crimes, not only domestic violence, and does not require the abuser to have any particular immigration status. It does require that you cooperated with law enforcement in some way during the investigation. In some cases, a person may qualify for both. In others, only one applies. The only way to know which path is right for your situation is to sit down with an attorney and go through the facts. If you are in a situation like the one I described above, please do not wait. For Attorneys Reading This If you are a criminal defense attorney with a noncitizen client, please do not finalize any plea without consulting an immigration attorney first. A disposition that looks clean on the criminal side can permanently close immigration doors. This happens constantly and it is almost always preventable. I work with criminal attorneys on cases like this regularly. Call me before you advise your client to accept anything. Attorney Arzoo Connor is the founder of ARC Legal Services in Fort Worth, Texas. She practices immigration law and estate planning and works with clients across the country. She is an immigrant herself and a veteran of the U.S. military. Her entire team has personally navigated the immigration process. ARC Legal Services: 469-200-0158 Consultations are $50. Same-day response is standard. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24 hours a day at 1-800-799-7233 or thehotline.org.
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I've had this conversation more times than I can count. Someone comes in, stressed, and walks me through their situation. They had a run-in with the law a couple of years back. Nothing major, they say. They hired a criminal attorney, took a plea deal, got the records expunged. Their attorney told them they were good. Their family told them they were good. They even found someone in a Facebook group who went through the same thing and came out fine. So they moved on. Until a green card application came up, or a renewal, or a petition for a family member. Now they're sitting across from me. And I have to tell them the thing nobody told them before: expungement means nothing in immigration court. The look is always the same. Disbelief, then the slow weight of what that actually means. Two Systems. Two Very Different Rules. Here's what a lot of people don't know, and honestly, what a lot of criminal attorneys don't fully think about either. The criminal justice system and the immigration system are separate. Completely. What fixes your record in one does not fix it in the other. When a criminal record gets expunged, the state is saying it didn't happen. You can say no on job applications. It won't show on most background checks. That matters and it's a real relief. But immigration law runs on federal rules. And under those rules, that arrest, that plea, that conviction it still happened. USCIS can see it. An immigration judge can weigh it. Depending on the charge, it can affect a visa application, a green card, even whether someone ends up in removal proceedings. It is not a technicality. It is just how these two systems work. And not knowing it can cost someone everything. The Case I Keep Thinking About I'll walk you through a real situation. Details are changed, but the facts are ones I see all the time. A client came to me after being arrested a few years earlier for possession of a weapon. Not a U.S. citizen. His criminal attorney was good, got him a plea deal, record got expunged. Case closed. Nobody brought in an immigration attorney because from the criminal side, there was nothing left to do. Then he went to apply for his green card. That charge came up. And because of how immigration law handles weapons offenses, it created a real problem. One that would have been a lot easier to deal with, maybe even avoidable, if I had been in the room before he signed that plea. This is something I want people to hear: I work with criminal attorneys regularly . When I get involved before a plea is entered, we can sometimes push for a lower charge, or frame the plea in a way that does less damage on the immigration side. Not every time. But enough times that it matters. And that difference is someone staying here with their kids or not. Once the plea is signed, the options get a lot harder. You work with what's there. Why This Keeps Happening I'm not blaming criminal attorneys. Most of them are good at their job. But immigration law moves fast, the rules keep changing, and it is hard to track unless it is all you do. They are focused on the criminal case. That is what they should be focused on. The problem is nobody thinks to ask. When you're scared and just arrested, you call a criminal attorney. That is the right move. But if you are not a U.S. citizen, you need to tell that attorney immediately. And a good criminal attorney, when they hear that, should call someone like me before advising you on any deal. Then there is social media. I cannot tell you how many people come in after reading a post from someone who swears their expungement cleared everything for immigration too. Maybe that person's charge was different. Maybe their status was different. Maybe they just got lucky and don't know it yet. Immigration cases are not the same. What worked for one person can absolutely wreck another. What to Do If This Sounds Familiar If you are not a U.S. citizen and you have a criminal record, even something minor, even something expunged, even something dismissed, talk to an immigration attorney before you file anything. Don't assume it was taken care of. Find out for sure. If you are dealing with criminal charges right now, tell your criminal attorney you have immigration concerns. Ask them to get on the phone with an immigration attorney before you accept any deal. Any attorney who takes their job seriously will do that without hesitation. And if someone in a group chat or a comment thread told you your expungement fixed your immigration situation, please don't treat that as legal advice. Come in and let us actually look at your case. One Conversation Can Change a Lot I do this work because it is personal to me. My family came here in 1996. I became a citizen in the middle of my first year of law school. Everyone in my office has been through their own version of this process. We know what is actually at stake for the people who sit across from us. My consultations run 45 minutes to 1 hour. I go through every option, what it costs, what the timeline looks like, what the risks are. If I can't help you, I will tell you straight and explain why. I turn people away regularly. But at least they leave knowing exactly where they stand. It costs $50 to come in. If you have a criminal matter in your past and an immigration case anywhere in your future, that is a conversation worth having now , not when something has already gone wrong. Ready to talk? Call ARC Legal Services (469) 200-0158 or reach out online. We respond the same day.
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