If someone had asked attorney Brittany Thomas Faith what she thought the U.S. needed in order to achieve meaningful immigration reform in 2015, she would have said a Republican president.
“George (H.W.) Bush was a compassionate conservative,” Faith says. “He fought hard for immigration reform and recognized the role of immigration in our history. I would have said we needed someone like him.”
Before the 2024 presidential election, Faith visited Ellis Island in New York Harbor with her family and sat on the same benches where “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” – as American poet Emma Lazarus wrote in “The New Colossus” – had waited for their opportunity to enter the U.S.
Faith says she imagined the Great Hall filled with the multitudes that had risked leaving their native country to start a new life in the U.S., and felt grateful for the opportunity to work on behalf of people who are making the same choices today.
“Being at Ellis Island was meaningful for me,” Faith says.
Faith says she also contemplated the shape her work would take if voters elected the Republican nominee on the presidential ballot. Then, she adds, none of her expectations came close to what has actually happened.
Turning the page
For 12 years, Faith has assisted clients with family- and business-based immigration petitions, as well as humanitarian relief, at Grant, Konvalinka & Harrison. The Chattanooga law firm hired her when she was freshly graduated from the University of Tennessee College of Law and then placed her under the mentorship of attorney David Elliott.
Faith credits Elliott with showing her the ropes of immigration work and coaching her through her early days of practice. Once she was standing on her own, Grant Konvalinka opened doors that allowed her substantially expand her knowledge and reach, she adds.
“I doubt there’s another place where I could have grown my practice like I did at Grant Konvalinka,” she says. “They allowed me to become involved in bar associations and attend conferences and meet people. Now if I have one kind of question, I can text someone in New York, or if I have another kind of question, I can text someone in California. I have a national network for immigration questions. I’m grateful for what they gave me.”
When Faith left Grant Konvalinka Jan. 15, she was the immediate former head of the immigration practice group at the firm.
As she walked into her new firm in the Pioneer Building the following morning, her name was slated to be on the door.
The next chapter of Faith’s story will be written at the practice formerly known as Cavett, Abbott & Weiss and presently christened Abbott, Weiss & Faith.
Faith says she’d hit the proverbial ceiling at Grant Konvalinka and needed to be where she could grow her practice again. Her future partners, Barry Abbott and Joshua Weiss, offered what she wanted without her having to ask.
“Some of the partners here pay for search engine optimization for their practices. They suggested they decrease their share to push my practice. That was huge,” Faith shares. “I spoke with other firms in town and had an offer to work remotely for a national firm, but this place felt right for me.”
Faith said Abbott and Weiss’ eagerness to invest in her practice was just one of many factors that made her decision to join the firm easy. They weren’t just willing to help promote her work, they were excited about doing so, she says.
As Faith settled into her new office in the Pioneer Building, she resumed her meditations on the future nature of her practice, only this time she tried to imagine what her work would be like after President Trump was sworn in.
Digging deeper
Faith admits that switching firms immediately before Trump began signing executive orders that would upend the U.S. immigration system was a risk, as her established clients were already skittish. But as she received the first replies to what would eventually amount to more than 400 letters, she saw that being a named partner at her new firm reassured her clients.
“My clients appreciate my name being on the door,” Faith says. “And most of them have moved with me. That felt good. They believe in me.”
Receiving an ego boost is one thing; living up to it is another. And as Faith sat down with a couple that’s facing deportation, she began to wonder if she could.
“He has a previous removal order, so as I listened to him I was thinking, ‘There’s nothing I can do for them. I don’t even want to take their money for the consultation,’” Faith recalls.
As the wife shed tears, Faith explained what she could and could not do. But it was nothing they hadn’t heard before from other immigration attorneys, all of whom had given them a dire prognosis.
Then the couple began to share stories about a neighbor they claim has been harassing them. From pushing the wife to repeatedly driving past their house to threatening to call U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the individual has been aggressive and persistent, they allege.
As Faith was listening, a little-used drawer in her storehouse of knowledge opened and she realized the law provided for a potential solution: a U Visa.
“I said, ‘I believe what the neighbor has been doing rises to the level of stalking under Tennessee law, so you might be able to qualify for a victim’s visa.’ If they can provide the documentation for everything that’s happened, I believe I can get him status and help them.”
As the couple were leaving, Faith realized she’d answered the questions she’d asked herself at Ellis Island and as she moved in with Abbott and Weiss: for her to successfully advocate for her clients in the current climate, she’s going to have to dig deeper than ever before.
Fortunately, Faith adds, she still loves the work.
“I hate that I’m having to do the work, but this is the work that makes me feel like I earned a law degree for a good reason.”
Fighting fear
The world in which Faith provides legal services has changed since she began to practice law. Or perhaps it’s the same and bad people are simply bolder, she suggests after recalling the appearance of pamphlets promoting the Klu Klux Klan in the Highland Park neighborhood of Chattanooga in late January.
Soon after the fliers made headlines, Faith and her new partners hammered out a safety plan for their firm. Friends and colleagues of Faith also began to inquire about her well-being. (Faith says she has been threatened with physical violence as a result of her work but never subjected to it.)
Instead of drinking from the cup of sympathy people were offering to her, Faith voiced her concern for the clients she serves.
“Yes, I’m afraid after the pamphlets and personal threats,” she admits. “But my fear is a fraction of the fear that immigrants live with every day.”
To help mitigate the concerns of all of her clients, Faith is doing what 12 years of practice have taught her to do and what her compassion for immigrants compels her to do: lean into the proverbial grindstone and work.
“I’m telling the nonprofits I’m advising that people with previous removal orders and people who have entered the United States in the last two years appear to be the highest risk for my employer clients,” she offers as an example. “It’s about dotting our i’s and crossing our t’s because we expect to be audited on every front. And about making sure they don’t hire anyone they believe might be undocumented because that could lead to massive fines.”
While Faith has no qualms about expressing her displeasure with the current narrative on immigration – which she says falsely casts Hispanics as job thieves, violent criminals and a drain on resources – she feels optimistic that it can change. A story about a white Republican student who worked at Grant Konvalinka as a runner indicates why, she says.
“Working with my clients changed his worldview because he had never been in a space where he was the minority. And that can be scary.”
The student wrote an essay about his experience working with Faith. It was only a few pages long, she says, but those pages became part of a different story she hopes becomes more prevalent in the U.S.
“We’ve lost our empathy for immigrants. That’s what happens when people are afraid. It’s easy to find a common ‘other’ and turn them into a monster. But it’s not fair. It’s not fair to our ancestors and it’s not fair to our history.”
Faith says she believes people in the U.S. can regain the empathy they felt for immigrants as far back as Jan. 1, 1892, when the first immigration station on Ellis Island opened. So, she bends ears whenever and wherever she can to help reshape the narrative.
“There are huge economic consequences to not having immigrants,” Faith offers as an example. “Studies show that for every immigrant in the U.S., one-and-a-half jobs are created. So, they don’t steal our jobs, they help us create them.”
Faith says she knows medicine can be bitter and hard for people to swallow, but she’s ready to spoon it out when the opportunity presents itself. Meanwhile, she’s focusing on the new opportunities at the firm that now bears her name.
“I’m excited about building something that’s mine. That makes me proud. There are times when I tell my husband (attorney Justin Faith), ‘I know I occasionally work late and travel to conferences, but I want our kids to understand later in life that when I was away from them, I was away for a reason. I didn’t work a lot for the sake of working, and it’s not that I didn’t care about them, but what I was doing was meaningful.’”