Undocumented People Have the Right to Recover for Their Injuries in Texas

Yes. Texas courts are open to any person injured by someone else's negligence, and immigration status is not one of the things you have to prove to win.

A negligence case turns on three questions. Who caused the harm, what the harm was, and what it costs to put right. Your papers are not on that list.

The law does not price a person's body by where they were born.

No. The person who caused your injuries owes the same damages whether you were born in Austin or in Michoacán.

Texas measures what is owed by the harm that was done. The immigration paperwork of the person it was done to has nothing to do with the number.

Insurance adjusters count on people never learning this.

Every claim that goes unfiled is money the carrier keeps.

Texas law treats immigration status as evidence that does not belong in an injury trial. In TXI Transportation Co. v. Hughes, 306 S.W.3d 230 (Tex. 2010), the Texas Supreme Court held that evidence of a person's unlawful immigration status was inadmissible and that putting it in front of the jury was harmful error.

Defense lawyers still reach for it. Keeping it out, in writing, before anybody gets to ask the question, is your lawyer's job.

We file a motion in limine before trial. It asks the judge to order that nobody says a word about immigration status, Social Security numbers, or country of origin in front of the jury, and TXI is the authority that backs the request.

We raise it ourselves. You never have to be the person who brings it up, and you never have to explain to a courtroom why it matters.

If a defense lawyer starts down that road in a deposition, your lawyer objects and does not let the question stand. That is what having somebody sitting next to you is for.

No. You file suit in your own name. There is no status check at the courthouse door and no immigration screen on a civil petition.

Driving without a license is a separate issue and it gets handled separately. It does not automatically make you at fault for a crash somebody else caused, because Texas asks whether a violation actually caused the collision.

The driver who ran the red light is still the driver who ran the red light.

Texas workers' compensation law defines an employee by the working relationship. Immigration papers are not part of the definition. See Tex. Lab. Code § 401.012.

Many Texas employers carry no workers' compensation at all. When an employer is a non-subscriber, an injured worker can sue that employer directly for negligence, and the employer loses most of the defenses it would otherwise have.

No, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. An injury claim is decided under Texas injury law. Immigration relief is a separate question, decided under federal immigration law, by a different kind of lawyer.

We will tell you plainly which one you are dealing with and point you to the right person for the other one.

The carrier has no business asking, and we give them no reason to. We do not ask about your status, we do not put it in a demand letter, and we do not report it.

What you tell us is protected by attorney-client privilege. That protection starts the day you call, before you sign anything and before you owe anybody a dollar.

The same categories any injured Texan can recover. Medical bills already incurred, medical care you will still need, lost wages, lost earning capacity, physical pain, mental anguish, physical impairment, and disfigurement.

Insurance defense lawyers sometimes argue that a worker's future earnings should be valued at wages in the country they came from. That argument gets made and it gets fought. Knowing it is coming is how you beat it.

We have recovered millions of dollars for undocumented clients hurt by other people's negligence in Texas, and we are still fighting for them today.

That money paid hospital bills, replaced wages that stopped the day of the crash, and stayed in the same neighborhoods the people who earned it live in.

The fear makes sense. People you know have been picked up over small things, and the safest-feeling move has always been to make no noise and take no chances.

Silence is what the other side is counting on. The adjuster who never hears from you closes the file and keeps the money, and nothing about your rent or your back gets any easier.

A lawyer is the person who makes the noise for you. You stay in the background. We are the ones on the phone, in the deposition, and in front of the judge.

We start from the fact that the fear is earned. Living without papers means weighing every ordinary act against what it could cost your family: a traffic stop, a clinic intake form, a landlord who wants to see an ID.

You learn to read every office and every uniform as something to get past. That instinct is survival and it has kept a lot of families safe.

An injury claim asks you to walk into that same system on purpose, which is why you should not walk in without a guide. Our job is to know the map: which office does what, which paper matters, how long each step takes, and what nobody is allowed to ask you.

Before anything happens, you will know it is coming and why. Surprises are what make this frightening, and taking them away is most of the job.

You are never the one who has to walk into that system alone.

Both lawyers at this firm are the children of immigrants. Israel's family came from Mexico. Rikki's came from the Philippines.

We grew up around the same waiting rooms, the same paperwork, and the same instruction to keep your head down. We know what it costs a family to decide that asking for help is too risky. We also know which arguments the other side reaches for when a client has no papers, because we have answered them before.

Call our office and you can speak Spanish to the person who answers and to the lawyer who takes your case. Nothing gets relayed through a stranger.

Get medical care and keep every piece of paper. Photograph the vehicles, the scene, and your injuries, and write down what happened while the details are still fresh.

When you call, the first moves are the ones that protect evidence: a letter to the carrier routing every contact through us, a preservation letter so the other side's dashcam and phone records do not get overwritten, and the crash report pulled before the file goes cold.

Call before you talk to any insurance adjuster. The consultation is free, you pay nothing unless we recover money for you, and the call costs you nothing except the time it takes to tell us what happened.

Call (512) 500-2810. Se habla español.