Immigrant Rights Clinic

Introduction

The Immigrant Rights Clinic (IRC) is a leading institution in both local and national struggles for immigrant rights. Our students engage in direct legal representation of immigrants and community organizations in litigation at the agency, federal court, and where necessary Supreme Court level, and in immigrant rights campaigns at the local, state, and national level. Each student, along with a student partner, will typically have the opportunity to represent both an individual or a set of individuals in litigation (such as a removal proceeding or appeal, detention litigation, or a civil suit) as well as a community or advocacy organization(s) in a campaign (such an organizing project or legislative campaign). We choose our docket in consultation with our community partners and engage in work that is responsive to community needs. Students have direct responsibility for these cases and the opportunity to build their understanding of legal practice and the field of immigrant rights law and organizing.

Our individual litigation work generally focuses on three main areas: (1) deportation defense, (2) detention challenges, and (3) affirmative immigrant rights litigation. Under current immigration law, thousands of noncitizens face exile and permanent separation from their families through deportation and detention policies every day, and the numbers are increasing. This is largely a result of an ever-expanding interconnection between the criminal and immigration systems—where even a misdemeanor conviction may lead to mandatory detention and deportation, even for someone with lawful permanent resident status (a “green card”) and U.S. citizen family members. Moreover, federal agencies have been aggressively targeting individuals who lack status—in their homes, workplaces, and communities, often by turning police officers into immigration agents. As a result of these policies, immigrants have been targeted, racially profiled, criminalized, and subjected to draconian deportation and detention policies. Our individual litigation work, in immigration and federal court, pushes back against unjust interpretations of the current law and pushes forward to create systemic change.

Our community campaign work generally focuses on two main areas: (1) dismantling systems that criminalize immigrants and (2) advancing immigrants’ access to justice, education, and community resources.

As social justice lawyers in the immigrant rights struggle, we recognize that traditional litigation practices are only one part of a larger movement. New York and New Jersey in particular are home to scores of amazing organizations that are engaged in immigrant organizing, public education, and legislative campaigns to fix our broken laws. Our clinic supports these efforts by representing these organizations in their work, much of which operates at the intersection of immigrant rights and decriminalization, economic and educational equity, and a number of key social justice issues.

Learning Outcomes

Students in our clinic will learn how to become effective social justice advocates. These skills include those necessary to engage in client counseling and interviewing, fact and narrative development, issue identification and creation, legal research and writing, oral advocacy, strategic case and campaign planning, media and communications, and movement lawyering. Students will learn how to work effectively with people of diverse perspectives and cultures and will develop tools to recognize and address bias, racism, and other forms of oppression in legal systems.

Course Description

Fieldwork

Each student in our clinic, along with a student partner (or in some cases more than one partner), will take on two projects: the representation of an individual (or set of individuals) in litigation and advocacy, and the support of a campaign or advocacy effort in partnership with an organization (or set of organizations) through litigation, legislative or policy advocacy, public education, and/or organizing support.

Students have direct responsibility for all aspects of their individual case and community campaign work. In individual cases, this means that students are the lead legal representatives. This may include client interviews, fact development, legal research, pleadings/complaint drafting, motions practice and briefing, negotiation, discovery, witness preparation, trial, and/or oral argument. In community campaign work, students will also take the lead in developing the relationship with our community partners and supporting their work. This may include legislative drafting, development of media strategies, planning for meetings with legislative or administrative officials, public education, amicus briefing and/or report documentation. In this way, the clinic gives students the opportunity to have their own cases and experience what it means to be a social justice lawyer.

We finalize our docket of cases/campaigns each summer prior to the start of the new academic year. Students have the opportunity to rank their preferences and we balance everyone’s interests and goals in assigning student teams to each case/project.

To give you a sense of what our docket typically includes, here are examples of past/current individual cases:

• Representing a lawful permanent resident facing deportation to Jamaica for past drug offenses. Students briefed his case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Board of Immigration Appeals. This case was referred by Make the Road New York and the Immigrant Defense Project.
• Representing a woman facing deportation to Ecuador who was injured, mistreated, and retaliated against by federal immigration officials, including while in custody. Students prepared and amended a complaint against the U.S. government for these injuries under the Federal Tort Claims Act, defending the complaint against a partial motion to dismiss in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and have pursued discovery in the case. This case was referred by Catholic Charities and the NY Dignity Not Detention Coalition.
• Representing a man facing deportation to Haiti who was born on a US military base in Germany to a United States military family and who has lived in the United States since he was a few months old. Students briefed his case including citizenship claims before the Board of Immigration Appeals and are working with a defense committee to draw media attention to his situation and to pursue a gubernatorial pardon. This case was referred by the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild.
• Representing a lawful permanent resident and immigrant rights leader facing deportation to Trinidad and Tobago based on a decades-old fraud conviction. Over many years, Students have briefed various aspects of his case—including detention challenges, deportation challenges, and post-conviction relief—before the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Third Circuits, Board of Immigration Appeals, and the U.S. District Courts for the Southern District of New York and the District of New Jersey.  Working with a defense committee, students successfully pursued a rare presidential pardon of our client’s conviction and are now working on finalizing the end to his deportation case. This case was referred by Families for Freedom.

Here are examples of past/current organizational campaign case work from our docket:

• Partnering with the NY Dignity Not Detention Coalition to support the end of immigration detention in New York State and advocacy around the NY Dignity Not Detention Act.
• Partnering with the Clemency Coalition to support the robust and transparent use of clemency for immigrants and advocacy around the Clemency Justice Act.
• Partnering with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Grassroots Leadership, Austin Sanctuary Network, and Free Migration Project, on a Freedom of Information Act request and damages litigation challenging the retaliatory use of civil fines against sanctuary movement leaders.

Seminar and Fieldwork Meetings

The seminar component of the Immigrant Rights Clinic is a practice-oriented examination of advocacy on behalf of immigrants. Following a training, the seminar meets once weekly and covers both substantive and skill-based issues that arise in our fieldwork. Students have the opportunity to learn about immigration law and, where it arises in our cases, the intersection of immigration law with criminal, international, and civil rights law. Students will learn about the immigrant rights movement, and its intersection with racial justice, abolitionist, and human rights movements. Students learn from their fellow students’ cases and campaign work, and have the opportunity to explore what it means to be a social justice lawyer.

In addition, each student team meets weekly with its supervisor to discuss its research, strategic assessments, and plans for meetings with clients, witnesses, opposing counsel, defense committees, or other groups. The fieldwork is student-run and closely supervised by clinic faculty.

Application Procedure

Students should submit the standard application, resume and transcript online via CAMS. Applicants should submit as lengthy a response to Question 4 of the standard application as they feel necessary and may ignore the 300 word limit. Students in the clinic will be available to answer questions at the clinic fair. The clinic accepts 2Ls and 3Ls. If you have any questions regarding the application process, please contact Noelia Rodriguez.

Students who enroll in the Immigrant Rights Clinic as 2Ls may have the opportunity to join the Advanced Immigrant Rights Clinic in their 3L year. There is no formal application process for the Advanced Immigrant Rights Clinic. Those students will be contacted about the application process in the Spring.

Student Contacts

We recommend that students interested in the clinic speak to current members of the Immigrant Rights Clinic and the Advanced Immigrant Rights Clinic:

Julianna Balaji-Wright
Djibril Branche
Maddie Butler
Naomi Chasek-Macfoy
Ryen Diaz
Abby Gramaglia
Mariel Gonzalez-Medellin
Isabel Hellman
Sam Karnes
Jorge Lee Ochoa
Jason Radvany
Cinthia Zavala Ramos

* 14 credits include 5 clinical credits and 2 academic seminar credits per semester.

** Courses in immigration law, administrative law, federal courts, criminal procedure, civil rights, public benefits law, evidence, and civil and criminal litigation may be helpful.