Crimmigration Clinic

Course Description

Immigration law has long been intertwined with criminal law, and thereby intertwined with criminal legal system practices that target immigrants of color. The law ties deportation, detention, and other immigration consequences to technical issues about the structure of state laws and state criminal charges and court outcomes. The current immigration system manages to make the state/federal relationship even more complex by ignoring many state efforts to ameliorate unjust outcomes in the state criminal system. The federal immigration law generally treats state classifications as dispositive for immigration purposes, depriving noncitizens of any ability to say they were wrongfully arrested, convicted, and sentenced. But when the state criminal law courts seek to remedy wrongful outcomes by revising convictions and sentences, the immigration system refuses, in many cases, to honor those changes. This bizarre interplay of federal immigration law and state criminal law has only gotten worse with an Attorney General decision from 2019 that requires heightened scrutiny of state court decisions to alter prior sentences, and thereby alter their immigration consequences.

This year, the interplay between the criminal and immigration systems has become more complex. The Lanken Riley Act, the first legislation the current president signed, mandates immigration detention based on a criminal arrest rather than a conviction. Lawyers in the crimmigration space are only beginning to unpack how this statute will affect advice to clients.

Lawyers, advocates, and communities affected by the intersection of immigration and criminal law have pushed back against the demonization of noncitizens with convictions with a wide range of strategies. These include legal arguments about immigration law, arguments about the requirements for state convictions, strategies to better advise criminal system defendants so that they can avoid extreme immigration consequences of convictions, post-conviction strategies that navigate the intricacies of existing case law, and mobilization and advocacy in states and localities.

These multiple advocacy strategies have had mixed success and are ongoing. For example, after a campaign by immigrant communities and advocacy groups, the New York State legislature passed a law that alters the maximum sentence for a misdemeanor by one day, thereby changing how such a conviction maps onto federal deportation categories. But a state campaign to assure stronger immigration advice protection for those facing criminal charges was vetoed by the Governor, despite strong support in the legislature. Thus, in addition to providing legal services to noncitizens seeking to work with existing laws, advocates continue to be engaged in broader campaigns to obtain greater protection for immigrants in the states.

The Crimmigration Clinic explores the highly technical but highly consequential interplay of federal immigration law and state criminal law. It immerses students in the issues as they arise in two critical practice settings: advice to noncitizens facing criminal charges and post-conviction advocacy to alter the immigration consequences of past convictions. Through the seminar and field placements, the clinic will consider how lawyers and advocates can effectively advocate for clients and communities. We will look at how a criminal record can be developed to avoid immigration consequences or to maximize defenses at the immigration stage. We will consider how lawyers can use post-conviction remedies to revise criminal records to ameliorate these consequences, and the changing immigration law regarding respect for state court changes to a conviction or sentence. We will learn about campaigns seeking to alter laws to better protect noncitizens from the cascading consequences of the criminal system. Each of these practice and advocacy settings will provide us with an opportunity to think through best practices for core lawyering activities: including interviewing, counseling, strategic planning, research, and written and oral advocacy. 

Fieldwork

The Crimmigration Clinic will co-counsel with several offices in New York City that work at the intersection of immigration and criminal law. In the Fall, we will work with Bronx Defenders and the Center for Appellate Litigation on cases arising in Manhattan and the Bronx. In the Spring, we will work with Appellate Advocates and a public defender office on cases arising in Brooklyn and Queens. Each office will identify supervisors that will work as co-counsel with Professor Morawetz and a team of two students to represent the clients. Our objective is for students to have the opportunity engage in substantial work, including meeting with and advocating on behalf of clients. Students will also have regular meetings with Prof. Morawetz and the placement supervisors to discuss and review their case work.

Seminar

The seminar will explore basic issues in crimmigration practice including: grounds of  deportability and inadmissibility; eligibility for forms of relief from removal; categorical and modified categorical analysis of statutes of conviction to determine whether they match federal grounds; attorney obligations in diverse practice settings; strategic issues in criminal and immigration defense to protect clients from immigration consequences; approaches to interviewing and counseling in the context of complex and uncertain legal terrain; cutting edge issues in immigration and post-conviction practice.; state and federal advocacy to alter the landscape for representing immigrants; and the role of movement-based advocacy in effecting change in the treatment of non-citizens with convictions. The seminar will explore issues in a way that is situated in the varied types of fieldwork of students in the clinic.

Initial Training

In order for students to be able to dive into the clinic work at the start of the semester, we will have a one-day training at the start of the semester to provide intensive training on crimmigration law. The training will be on Monday, August 25, 2025 for the Fall session of the clinic and either on Friday January 16, 2026 or Saturday January 24 for the Spring semester, depending on the preference of the students in the clinic.

Learning Outcomes

The Crimmigration Clinic seeks to advance students’ mastery of core lawyering skills, including interviewing, fact analysis, legal research, identification of and evaluation of strategic options, counseling, and effective written and oral advocacy. Students will need to understand how the issues presented in a case will be seen by other actors in the criminal legal system and identify ways in which the matters can be presented to best accomplish the goals of the client. Students will explore how biases can affect their interactions with others, including clients, co-counsel and opposing counsel. Working at the intersection of immigration and criminal law will present multiple opportunities to probe how historic and current under-representation affect the options available to our clients. The clinic will provide opportunities to reflect on lawyering activities to better learn from experience. For a comprehensive discussion of the learning outcomes sought in this clinic, please see the NYU Lawyering Program Learning Outcomes page.

Application Procedure

Students interested in applying for the clinic should submit the standard application, resume, and transcript online through CAMS. Students may apply to both the Fall and Spring semesters of the clinic; in that case, they may use the same application for both semesters but should list the clinics separately in their preferences. To arrange an interview, please use the CAMS system as well. If you have questions regarding the application procedure, please contact Noelia Rodriguez.

Student Contacts

This clinic was last offered in the Fall of 2023. The students have mostly graduated, but you may reach out to Marie Portes at if you are interested in further information about the clinic from a student perspective.

* 7 credits include 5 clinical credits and 2 academic seminar credits.