"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt and Dr. Alicia Triche, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
The Jacob Burns Community Legal Clinics at The George Washington University Law School
The Jacob Burns Community Legal Clinics at The George Washington University Law School
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Professor Paulina Vera has been named one of Lawyers of Color’s inaugural “Wonderful Women,” which recognizes dynamic women attorneys working in law firms, companies, and government agencies who show promise in their careers and demonstrate a strong commitment to advancing diversity in the legal profession! If you’re interested, the press release can be found here: https://lnkd.in/gGAC-85F
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Paulina Vera GW Law Faculty Profile
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Congratulations again, Paulina, my friend! So well deserved!Can’t wait to see you on the bench @ EOIR, some other Federal Judgeship, or another high-level leadership position.
Paulina was a (Legacy) Arlington Immigraton Court Intern and a “charter member” of the NDPA!
Slavery, its wonton cruelty, negative impact on America, and the stories of the enslaved African Americans who persevered can’t ultimately be “swept under the carpet” by GOP white nationalists. IMAGE: Public realm
David W. Blight reviews Rachel Swarns’s new book “The 272” For The NYT:
. . . .
“The 272,” Rachel L. Swarns’s deeply researched and revelatory new book, is the story of the remarkable Mahoney clan and how their lives, nearly a century and a half after Ann Joice’s, intersected with those of Mulledy, McSherry and the Jesuits in one of American slavery’s most withering tragedies. “The 272” is a fascinating meditation on the meaning of slavery and of people converted to property and commodities — assets of wealth and objects of sale. It’s a book that journeys to slavery’s heart of darkness: to the separation of families, the terror of being sold into the vast unknown and of bodies transformed into profits and investments. But it is also the moving human story of some of the people who endured and survived this ordeal, and who have long awaited rediscovery.
Swarns, a contributing writer for The New York Times and a professor of journalism at N.Y.U., is an African American Catholic who was raised on Staten Island. Beginning with an article in The Times in 2016, she revealed the story of the Jesuits as slaveholders and traders, leading to a stunning reckoning by Georgetown University with its past as well as one within the Jesuit order itself. Swarns writes with a keen eye and distinctive voice both about her Black subjects and about the hypocrisy and brutality of their onetime owners. The Jesuits were no monolith of greed and evil, however; Swarns sustains empathy for some who tried, largely unsuccessfully, to protect the enslaved people they had known so closely from the agony of sale that looms over this story.
. . . .
What comes through most effectively is the sorrow and the determination to survive of the enslaved people whom Swarns brings to light through her sleuthing and resonant prose. (Of Ann Joice, Swarns writes, “She would have no wealth, no land and no savings to leave her family, but she still had her story. … The story would be her legacy.”) Swarns also underscores the importance of Georgetown’s ongoing efforts at serious reparations for the deeds of its early leaders. An independent nonprofit, the Georgetown Memory Project, has identified around 6,000 living descendants of the original 272. In turn, the university has offered descendants formal “legacy” status for admission, sought atonement through a highly publicized apology and created a fund that would dedicate $400,000 a year to community projects, including support for health clinics and schools, likely to benefit descendants. Leaders of the Jesuit conference of priests have also vowed to establish a $100 million trust to benefit descendants and promote racial reconciliation.
No single work of history can remedy the vexing issue of repair for slavery in America, but “The 272” advances the conversation and challenges the collective conscience; without knowing this history in its complexity we are left with only raw, uncharted memory.
David W. Blight is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom” and the forthcoming “Yale and Slavery: A History.”
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Read Blight’s full review at the above link.
This is the kind of important, often intentionally buried, history that GOP white nationalists like DeSantis, Trump, and others don’t want read and honestly discussed. But, as with most artificially suppressed works, the truth will out! There are just too many people speaking it these days for even the neo-fascist censors to silence them all.
It also illuminates the heretofore unknown and unheralded stories of enslaved African-Americans like Ann Joice who, against the odds, persevered in a grotesquely unjust and horrible system so that future generations could have a chance at a better life. These are are among the real heroes ofAmerican history who helped make our country what it is today. Their stories deserve to be told and studied.
Full disclosure: I am an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law School.
I love this country dearly, but not without deep sorrow for the mistakes of my own homeland. And so, I criticize it because I want this place to mean freedom for everyone.
On July 4th, I will celebrate with my mixed-immigrant, first-generation family, neighbors, and community. I tell my little one she is an Incan-Viking Warrior (because she is). And that there are places where not everyone is free, including in our own country. But we are working to change that. I try to teach her about refugees and why people flee their homes to come to the United States.
We also talk about family separation. Not long after zero-tolerance began, another child told mine that she “belongs in a cage” after all of us, young and old alike, saw those images. These are the misgivings of small children but also the symptoms of a deeply flawed system and culture. The way the Zero Tolerance Policy desecrated freedom continues to haunt us today.
As the director of CAIR Coalition’s Detained Adult Program, I believe we can help right the path our country is currently on—one that continues to separate families with unrestrained racism and violence. The family separation crisis is ongoing, senseless, and continues to destroy our communities.
The United States has the largest immigration system in the world and is currently detaining approximately 29,000 immigrants, more than 63 percent of whom have no criminal record. In addition, the Biden Administration has deported over four million people, the majority for simple civil immigration violations, including not having the correct paperwork. This should be the least complicated public policy-making decision.
Immigrants’ rights groups need a new platform to stop these inhumane policies. It should be simple:
Stop separating families.
On an annual average, over 1,500 children in the DMV are impacted by a parent’s detention. Over a thousand children put their best forward as they try to move on with their lives without their parents—over a thousand children!
Why policies that harm our own children and communities are allowed to continue is heartbreaking. Our policies must keep families together.
Provide Immigrants in deportation proceedings with government-appointed counsel.
Immigrants in deportation proceedings, including parents, are forced to defend themselves against a government-trained attorney without a right to court-appointed counsel in a language often not their own. This means children become indefinitely separated from their parents simply because the right to a public-defense counsel is not available in immigration court. One solution would be to support the Fairness to Freedom Act and local programs for the right to counsel.
Being a parent is scary enough because there is very little you have control over in this world, but I know I am free to access the institutions in this country to care for, educate, and protect my child, but not everyone does.
As I celebrate this holiday, I will light fireworks and sparklers and do so as a symbolic spark to action for change and family unity. I hope you will join me.
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GW Law Immigration Clinic Director Professor Alberto Benítez & Co-Director Professor Paulina Vera
From Professors Alberto Benitez and Paulina Vera, Co-Directors, GW Law Immigration Clinic:
“Thank you isn’t enough to express how grateful we are.”
On May 22, 2023, V-M- was granted her green card. Her applications were filed on April 18, 2022 and her interview at USCIS was waived. V-M- is the wife of our long-time client, E-K-. The Clinic started representing E-K- in 2009 and helped him obtain asylum, his green card, and then his U.S. citizenship. Once he became a U.S. citizen, he was able to petition for his wife, V-M-, with whom he has two kids, ages 2 and 4. Like E-K-, V-M- is from Cameroon.
Please join me in congratulating Mir Sadra Nabavi and Trisha Kondabala, who both worked on the case.
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Jay Kuo American Author, Producer, CEO of The Social Edge PHOTO: Facebook
When I was little, my Ba would bring out fireworks for the Fourth of July. He acquired them in places like Maryland, where our family would go summer camping on the state beaches, and brought them across state lines to our little suburban enclave in upstate New York. As soon as it was dark enough out, many of our neighbors would gather, the area kids eager to see what Mr. Kuo had in store that year. Sparklers for sure. Sometimes big noisemakers. And always more than a few showstopper rockets with brilliant flourishes of color. He would hand them out to us to dole out to the other children without a thought to liability.
The 1970s were a crazy time.
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It didn’t occur to me until much later that there was some irony here. We were the only Chinese American household in the area. With four kids and a house on the corner of two main streets, our family was the center of activity for Tioga Terrace. And on July 4, Ba would bring the magic, developed centuries ago by people who looked like us, gunpowder mixed carefully with binding and coloring agents, bringing wonder and delight.
I understood we were celebrating the independence of America from the British Crown, and I most clearly remember the bicentennial celebration that took place in 1976. Our schools had focused heavily on American history that year, yet most of my understanding of what had transpired 200 years before still came from watching our Founding Fathers sing about it in the movie 1776.
Musical theatre has always been in my DNA.
In that merry portrayal, the heroes of the revolution were towering figures: debonair, erudite, romantic, able to find gallows humor at the darkest of hours. I remember best the musical number around whether slavery should be condemned in the words of the Declaration. It was a terrifying and bewildering song. What did molasses and rum and Bibles have to do with Roots? And I remember vividly poor Thomas Jefferson, the author of that brilliant document, being called out for still practicing slavery on his property.
“I have already resolved to release my slaves,” said a quietly thoughtful Jefferson.
I sincerely believed that earnest and brave man, who thrilled his colleagues with the playing of his violin, his adoring wife Martha swooning to the tune. He was a noble man, to be admired.
We didn’t learn the real truth about Jefferson, or about any of the Founding Fathers, in class. And it wasn’t taught to me in college either, even though I was a political science major. The first person to challenge my view of our any of the Founders was a Black colleague I met during my RA training, who had brought up that we don’t ever teach real history. She cited the story of Jefferson and Sally Hemings, one of the many slaves he owned—a girl he had raped when she was just 14 years old.
I didn’t want to believe it. The Declaration of Independence, and its famous author, were sacred in my mind. The principles they espoused were of the highest order. And in my mind, July 4th was my favorite holiday, next to Christmas. For one day, Ba was cooler than all the other dads, and at least for that day we were the most popular kids in the neighborhood, even though we were not fully American—at least, that’s how it had always felt.
Once the veil was pierced, however, the truth began to burn holes through my mind. I began to question a great deal of the mythology that had been spoonfed to me, really to all of us. Christopher Columbus, that was a shocker. Manifest Destiny. The Chinese Exclusion Act. The Tulsa Massacre. The internment of Japanese Americans. With each revelation, it was hard not to become deeply and irretrievably cynical about our history and the way our country has always acted toward the most vulnerable in America.
There’s a strange thing that happens when you come out the other end of all that. I began to wonder how they did it. How did people like Frederick Douglass, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and even my own hero George Takei still have anything left of faith and belief in this country, after all it had done to them, their families, their communities?
“We hold these truths to be self-evident.”
That all people are equal. That we all possess “unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Those words were revolutionary in their time. And they indeed spawned a revolution. Despite my great disillusionment, they still inspire and hold true for me today. That’s the power of the enduring promise of America. Not that we will always, or even most of the time, get things right, or that we won’t stumble our way into dark and nearly hopeless chapters of genocide, slavery, internment, and yes, growing Christofascism today.
Loving the promise of America isn’t the same as loving what it has done and still does to break that promise, over and over. But I’ve come to appreciate the high value of maintaining our gaze upon that North Star, the one that still shines for liberation, fairness and equality. That the promise has now endured nearly 250 years speaks to our collective and deep desire for hope, even in the face of broad and dehumanizing injustice and inequity.
The America that our white, propertied, slave-holding male Founders envisioned isn’t what we’ve got today. But that’s because we’ve improved upon that vision. For me, the America of tomorrow is a truly multi-racial, multi-denominational, pluralistic democracy, a place of opportunity and prosperity, with no one left behind. That is the vision that sustains me. It’s the one where my Chinese father could hand out fireworks on July 4 to excited, white kids and seem the most American of all the dads.
We inherited both a sacred promise and a big mess from those who came before, and we’re still working on both. The fact that it is so very hard, and we have so very far still to go, is strong evidence of the incredible value of that promise. This is evidenced in great part by how fiercely others will fight with all they have to keep us from it.
But nothing worth fighting for was ever won without a fight. And in the end, the enemies of our unalienable rights will fail. That is the faith I keep.
Happy Independence Day. Our fight continues.
— Jay
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As Jay says, “the fight continues.” And, the patriots quoted above are on the front lines!
Sad historical footnote: Whatever the “musical version of TJ supposedly ‘resolved,’” the real-life version freed only two enslaved workers in his lifetime and five (including two of his own children) at death. The rest of his enslaved workers and their families were sold upon his death to pay off his monumental debts. Thus, these enslaved African-Americans paid a huge personal price for this “Father of Freedom’s” gross financial mismanagement!
For African Americans, working and being owned by the primary drafter of the Declaration of Independence was a bad deal! No freedom, no pay, and almost all of those he owned at death got sold to pay off the debts he left, resulting in the permanent separation of families! This is the real history of our nation that Trump, DeSantis, and other GOP White Nationalist “snowflakes” don’t want you to hear or learn. IMAGE: Public realm
According to Wikipedia:
Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, owned more than 600 slaves during his adult life. Jefferson freed two slaves while he lived, and five others were freed after his death, including two of his children from his relationship with his slave (and sister-in-law) Sally Hemings. His other two children with Hemings were allowed to escape without pursuit. After his death, the rest of the slaves were sold to pay off his estate’s debts.
Holy card ( 1899 ) showing an illustration to the Gospel of Matthew 25, 34-36 – rear side of an obituary. Wolfgang Sauber Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Editorial: Sanctuary cities are working just fine, thank you
When Republican Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida bused and flew migrants to Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., and other so-called “sanctuary cities,” they might have envisioned they were exporting the same chaos as border states have experienced as they grapple with a historic number of migrants. They wanted leaders in these cities to admit they were wrong about their immigrant-friendly policies.
But Abbott and DeSantis are mistaken if they think they are teaching cities with sanctuary polices any lessons with their inhumane political stunts or causing their leaders to rethink their commitment to not treating migrants as criminals.
Those governors and their political allies also seem to be confused about what it means when cities have sanctuary policies. Though policies vary, providing sanctuary means not turning migrants over to federal immigration authorities simply for being in the country illegally. It means treating them like humans in need rather than pawns.
That’s what leaders in Los Angeles, Sacramento and other “sanctuary cities” did as buses and planes dumped dozens of tired and often confused migrants on their doorsteps in recent months. They rallied attention and resources, while religious and other nonprofit organizations stepped up to welcome the migrants with shelter, food and clothes. In some instances, these migrants have even found temporary jobs, illustrating the need for their labor.
Abbott and DeSantis may also not realize that sanctuary policies were designed to help law enforcement keep communities safe. Sanctuary policies were developed because police in many cities such as Los Angeles were frustrated because undocumented immigrants were not reporting crimes or stepping forward as witnesses for fear of deportation.
Critics say these sanctuary cities have laws and policies that shield criminals and obstruct federal immigration policies. But cities with sanctuary policies have lower than average crime rates, higher household incomes and lower poverty rates, according to various studies.
Local authorities did not refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement, as critics claim. They simply limited the role of local law enforcement in immigration cases, for example, by not using local police to do immigration checks or by not holding an undocumented immigrant in custody for a few extra days to serve federal authorities’ schedules.
Los Angeles is in the midst of transitioning from a “city of sanctuary” to “sanctuary city.” The difference is more than just semantics. The former designation is little more than a statement by city leaders in 2017 that they opposed then-President Trump’s dehumanizing anti-immigrant policies, which included separating young children from their parents. Some of those children have yet to be reunited with their parents years later. Earlier this month, the City Council voted to strengthen the policy by banning city personnel or resources from being used for immigration enforcement.
It’s true that the transports of migrants by the Texas and Florida governors have been inconvenient to cities such as Washington and New York, which have had to scramble to find housing and other resources. But they haven’t done a thing to undermine the foundation on which sanctuary policies were built.
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The money wasted by these GOP nativist neo-fascists could much better be spent on coordinated efforts to help asylum seekers to help themselves and our nation in the process. Obviously, GOP states like Florida and Texas have money toburn.
Also, to the extent that cities “targeted” by these GOP White Nationalist Governors have persevered in the face ofattempts to sow chaos, it has been largely without the coordination, guidance, and leadership of the Biden Administration. Seems like that should be “low hanging fruit” for progressive Democrats to change!
People talk frequently about forward and backward movement in one’s career, but less so about the gift of lateral moves. I have been lucky enough to make at least one facially “lateral” move that drastically changed the scope and reach of my immigration advocacy work: as the first Policy Counsel for Immigration at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights!
Through the work of incredible jacks-of-all-trades on staff like Rob Randhava, The Leadership Conference has played an integral role in a number of major moments in the immigration space and maintained an Immigration Task Force. The organization wanted to concretize this work by hiring a full-time staffer, and on the heels of my work at the UndocuBlack Network, I felt this role was the right fit. I grew up in a distinctly Jamaican household, visiting our home country most of my childhood summers, but I also sought a sterling education in the Black American experience.
One of my proudest moments at The Leadership Conference was also one of the most complex, challenging moments of my career—trying to connect the dots between seemingly disparate, painful topics to highlight the interconnectivity of our racial justice and immigrant justice movements. For me, the line between the so-called “Great Replacement Theory,” the targeting of Black Americans in Buffalo in May 2022, and the deleterious, disproportionate effects of Title 42 on Black asylum seekers couldn’t have been brighter. I felt The Leadership Conference was perfectly poised to connect those dots in a public way, by co-leading a sign-on letter to the Biden Administration. But I had to make my case with both internal and external partners with care and finesse, drawing on all of my education and experiences to guide me. No community wants to feel as though another community is opportunistically seizing a moment to elevate its interests while riding on the backs of others. I am proud to say that I persuaded a number of skeptics, many of whom were rightfully protective of their communities and civil rights legacies, to see the urgency of drawing these connections for those in power. Through this effort I was reminded that the work of connecting the Black diaspora is arduous, but can bear powerful fruit.
I’ve said it many times: There will be neither racial justice nor equal justice for all in America without justice for migrants!
Breanne obviously “gets it!” So do leaders like Cory Booker (D-NJ).
Sadly, however, many Democrats, including notable African-American leaders like President Barack Obama, Vice President Kamala Harris, AAG Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, and former AGs Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch don’t! They all blew or are squandering opportunities to make due process and equal justice for asylum seekers and other migrants a reality, rather than a hollow, unfulfilled promise!
In particular, the “intentional tone-deafness” of the Biden Administration on treatment of asylum seekers and other migrants of color has been astounding and shocking! Speaking out for justice for George Floyd and others while denying due process and the very humanity of Blacks and other people of color seeking legal asylum at the Southern Border is totally disingenuous and counterproductive!
Additionally, while there recently have been some improvements in merit-based selections by AG Garland, the U.S. Immigration Courts, including the BIA, are still glaringly unrepresentative of the communities affected by their decisions and the outstanding potential judicial talent that could and should be actively recruited from those communities. An anti-immigrant, pro-enforcement, uber-bureaucratic “culture” at EOIR, which metastasized during the Trump Administration, discouraged many well-qualified experts, advocates, and minorities from competing for positions at EOIR.
The inexplicable failure of Vice President Harris to establish herself as the “front person” to actively encourage and promote service in the Immigration Courts among minorities and women is highly perplexing. Additionally, the failure of the Biden Administration to recognize the potential of the Immigration Courts as a source of exceptionally-well-qualified, diverse, progressive, practical scholars for eventual Article III judicial appointments has been stunning!
Meanwhile, for an “upgrade” of the struggling EOIR, one couldn’t do better than Breanne Palmer: brilliant practical scholar, forceful advocate, courageous, creative innovator, and inspirational role model. As Breanne says on her website:
I try to live by one of Audre Lorde’s creeds:
“I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.”
Sure could use more of that intellectual and moral courage and “leadership by example” on the bench at EOIR! And, as I mentioned yesterday, there are or will be more judicial positions available at EOIR at both the appellate and trial levels. See, e.g., https://wp.me/p8eeJm-8KK.
Thanks Breanne for choosing to use your tremendous skills and abilities to further due process, equal justice for all, and racial justice in America. So proud of you!
Don’t just complain about the awful mess @ the BIA! Get on the appellate bench and do something about it! Public Domain
Summary
The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) at the Department of Justice (DOJ) is seeking a highly-qualified individual to join our team of expert professionals who serve as Appellate Immigration Judges.
This is an Excepted Service position, subject to a probationary period. The initial appointment is for a period not to exceed 24 months. Conversion to a permanent position is contingent upon appointment by the Attorney General.
Although there was no formal announcement from EOIR, it appears that Appellate Immigration Judge William Cassidy has finally retired from the BIA. As many of you know, Judge Cassidy, appointed by AG Billy Barr, was notoriously hostile to asylum seekers and to a fair application of the generous well-founded-fear standard for asylum enunciated by the Supremes in INS v. Cardoza-Fonsecaand by the BIA in Matter of Mogharrabi. His “final” TRAC Immigration asylum denial rate as an Immigration Judge in Atlanta was an appalling and bone-chilling 99.1%! https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/judge2022/00004ATD/index.html.
This is a chance for a “real judge” with impeccable academic knowledge, practical solutions, and actual experience representing asylum applicants in the EOIR quagmire to bring some long-overdue and absolutely essential positive, progressive, change to the BIA – a group overall known for its too-often stilted, sloppy, improperly pro-Government, “go along to get along,” “don’t rock the boat by standing up for due process and human rights” decision-making.
The BIA’s lousy performance on the “stop time rule,” where they were twice rebuked by the Supremes for ignoring the language of the statute and the Court’s own holdings, is a classic example of why we need fundamental change at the top of EOIR. This substandard performance generated more unnecessary backlog and “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” in a system that can ill afford it (2 million case backlog). It also created unnecessary confusion and uncertainty in a situation where clarity was both required and achievable. I daresay, it’s hard to imagine any NDPA “practical scholar” getting sidetracked the way the BIA did in its misguided rush to please DHS Enforcement and its political “handlers” at DOJ!
Also, because of “jurisdiction stripping” legislation over the years, limiting the review of the Article IIIs in many areas, the BIA often represents the last realistic chance for individuals to obtain justice and fair treatment!That the BIA too often acts like an “assembly line,” doesn’t diminish its potential to become part of the solution rather than a source of further problems and unfairness.
Don’t let this important Federal Judgeship, with real life or death power over the lives of individuals and the future of our democracy, go by default to another “insider” or asylum denier.
I hear complaints from practitioners nationwide about the BIA’s poor scholarship and failure to issue realistic, positive guidance. But, it’s not going to change unless the “best and the brightest” from the NDPA apply for these critical jobs at EOIR and become agents of change.
Don’t let this chance go by to make a difference in the lives of others and to use your hard-earned expertise and practical skills to fundamentally change our failing U.S. judicial system — starting at the critical “retail level.”
The deadline is July 5, 2023, conveniently during the July 4 holiday. But, don’t let mindless bureaucratic tactics and feeble efforts at recruitment deter you. Force the USG to recognize and employ “judicial excellence” – once the “vision” of EOIR (before “good enough for government work” became the motto). I urge well-qualified minority candidates to apply for this key position!
Juan P. Osuna (1963-2017) Judge, Executive, Scholar, Teacher, Defender of Due Process
Special Collection on Access to Justice, Due Process and the Rule of Law in Tribute to Juan Osuna
On November 15, 2018, CMS hosted an event on access to justice, due process and the rule of law to honor the legacy of Juan Osuna, a close colleague and friend who held high-level immigration positions in four administrations over a 17-year period. Prior to his government service, Mr. Osuna served as a respected editor and publisher and a close collaborator with many civil society organizations. As a follow-up to its gathering, CMS is publishing a series of blogs, essays, talks, and papers on the values and issues to which Mr. Osuna devoted his professional life. It will ultimately compile these papers into a CMS special collection in Mr. Osuna’s memory. CMS hopes that this special collection will contribute to the development of a removal adjudication system that operates in a fair, equitable, effective, and rights-respecting way.
Juan was my friend, colleague, fellow Adjunct Professor at Georgetown Law, and one of my successors as BIA Chair.My tribute to Juan at the time of his untimely death in 2017 was, I believe, the “most viewed item ever” on “Courtside.” For those who missed it, here it is. https://wp.me/p8eeJm-1gd.
I am honored to have one of my articles included with those of amazing immigration “practical scholars” in this connection!
Zareen Syed Reporter Chicago Tribune PHOTO: Chicago Tribune website
Zareen Syed writes in the Chicago Tribune:
He says he can’t really describe torture or the night terrors that still creep up on him years later, but he’ll try. He starts out with a picture: a prison cell the size of a rug and a creaky door that he couldn’t help but stare at. Every time it opened, he knew he’d either be released or tortured once again.
When Emad Mahou tells the story of being imprisoned in Syria during the 2011 revolution, his voice has a heaviness, unlike the joy he exhibits when talking about not knowing how to order a Subway sandwich when he arrived in Chicago as a refugee.
Emad Mahoud PHOTO: DePaul Law
With his hands he demonstrates the ups and downs of the last 12 years — from being released and offered refuge in America to graduating from the DePaul University School of Law. As his wife, 8-year-old daughter and his father stood in the stands, he walked across the stage with hopes of practicing human rights law to help other refugees coming into the country.
Mahou’s father, Shirkou Mahou, flew in from Lebanon to attend the May 20 ceremony on a visit visa.
“I’m seeing a part of my dad I didn’t see before,” Mahou said. “He’s an old man. When I left he was much stronger, much younger.”
On a May afternoon, days before the graduation ceremony, Mahou’s dad was sitting next to him on a couch in one of DePaul’s Loop campus law buildings, wearing a brown suit, white shirt and a prayer hat on his head.
It’s his first time in America. His first time seeing his son’s new life up close — so different from the life he left at age 21.
He cried audibly every now and then, especially when Mahou would translate for him into Arabic parts of what he was sharing about the Syria of his childhood versus the Syria he left behind.
. . . .
Mahou’s memories of some of his arrests are blurry, except for one in which he was detained and tortured for three months. In June 2011, he said he spent 100 days in an underground cell the size of a rug. He didn’t know it when he was thrown in, but this would also be the last time he’d be imprisoned.
“The torture was really over the limit at that point. I was really struggling with the pain,” Mahou said. “It was daily, continuous, degrading. One day in particular, they took turns urinating on me. It got to a point where mentally I was broken. You smell yourself and I felt really, really bad. I am used to a nice life. I showered daily. I was in college to be an architect.”
Mahou stops and reminds himself that he had a full life in Zabadani, Syria, before the revolution. They all did.
“At that point, I was almost done with college and I had a whole future ahead of me. And I just looked at where I am now. That day was my weakest day mentally. I was shattered. The humiliation went too far — like they’re using you as a toilet … so I banged my head on the wall.”
. . . .
He started attending community college at Harry Truman toward a degree in computer science in the fall of 2013, before transferring to DeVry. In 2017, he got a job as a web developer for the board of trustees at DePaul University. There he met law professor Craig Mousin, who sat in an office across from Mahou.
Rev. Craig Mousin Ombudsperson Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, Grace School of Applied Diplomacy DePaul University PHOTO: DePaul Website
Mousin said when Mahou realized that he taught at the law school and that his specific area of teaching was asylum and refugee law, it piqued his interest.
“Emad has intimate knowledge of how governments can use all the power and authority they have to stifle dissent,” Mousin said. “And sometimes in doing asylum and human rights cases, there’s this built-in assumption that governments would not hurt their own citizens. And sometimes it’s very difficult for people in the United States who live with relative freedom to understand that. Emad’s felt the brunt of that failure.”
With Mousin’s guidance, Mahou tapped into his experience of standing up for freedom in Syria and what he calls “a rebel mentality” to figure out that what he actually wants to do isn’t web development, but rather become a lawyer. On May 20, he earned his juris doctorate.
“I really want to learn about other people’s experiences in the system,” said Mahou, who now lives in Oak Park. “People who are fleeing persecution, traveling through dangerous paths to seek refuge, those are the people I want to help.”
Mahou said he’s now studying for the bar exam but was fortunate to get a taste of the kind of cases he would like to work on when he enrolled in DePaul’s Asylum and Immigration Law Clinic, where he helped put together an asylum petition for a family.
As Mahou recounts his tale, he shares that he’s seen his parents for a total of 20 days since 2011, during short visits to Lebanon. And now he was making up for lost time.
. . . .
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Refugees have been making America great since before there was an America!
Thanks to my friend Processor Craig Mousin at DePaul Law for passing this along.
Inside Immigration Court: The Pros, Cons Of Remote Hearings
By Mimi Tsankov | June 2, 2023, 6:05 PM EDT ·
Listen to article
In this Expert Analysis series, immigration judges discuss best practices for attorneys who appear before them and important developments in immigration court practice for cases involving asylum, detention, deportation and adjustment to lawful permanent resident status.
Hon. Mimi Tsankov President,NAIJ
Mimi Tsankov
The pandemic has reset settled expectations about how we interact in the workplace, and that transformation has hurled the nation’s immigration courts on a technological voyage into the 21st century.
Despite record congressional appropriations over the past few cycles targeted, in part, on technological advances, the court has relied historically on physical files, paper communications and traditional, in-person exchanges.[1]
Although video teleconferencing has been in limited use at the immigration court since the mid-1990s, those hearings were most often in detained settings, relying typically on judges, attorneys, interpreters and legal staff who were physically present in the courthouse.[2]
During the pandemic, with court staff hamstrung for months, struggling to process mountains of court-paper filings, and judges in some jurisdictions unable to hold hearings, EOIR rolled out about 100 specially equipped laptops with digital audio recording applications installed and connected to a commercially available video conferencing application called Cisco Webex.
These so-called DAR laptops enable the parties, the witnesses, the public and even the judge to appear at hearings virtually because the laptops can digitally record the video hearings in the same way as a judge in a courtroom.[3]
This powerful advance was made all the more effective with the introduction of the EOIR Courts and Appeals System, or ECAS, an online tool for filing and maintaining records of proceeding that is now operational throughout the entire immigration court system.[4]
. . . .
With improvements sure to be made as technological capabilities advance in the years ahead, the OIG has recommended that immigration courts “[c]ontinue the deployment of remote kits to immigration judges to ensure that immigration judges have the equipment necessary to adjudicate hearings efficiently from non-court settings.” This way, judges can more easily assist courts in areas overwhelmed by new cases, and mitigate health- and safety-related court cancelations.
Expansion of the remote judge corps program offers obvious efficiencies, especially if the court is able to speed up and optimize digitization of our backlogged files. Although there are some courts that are reducing reliance on the remote hearing program, as of February that appears to be an anomaly given the overwhelming support nationwide for the program.[14]
With the trial immigration judges poised to adapt and adopt these advances, it will be up to EOIR management to lead the way in determining how quickly and effectively these and other stakeholder-identified challenges can be addressed.
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Thanks, Mimi, for all you do for due process and American justice! The above link will take you to the full article, complete with citations and disclaimer.
Sadly, my friend, waiting for “EOIR management to lead the way,” is likely to be “Waiting for Godot.”
Immigration practitioners waiting for EOIR “Management” to show. It could be a long wait. Very long! Naseer’s Motley Group in The Rose Bowl Merlaysamuel Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Waiting for Godot in Doon School.jpg Copy [[File:Waiting for Godot in Doon School.jpg|Waiting_for_Godot_in_Doon_School]] Copy December 8, 2011
Experts on the immigration court system will highlight the systemic problems in the US immigration system that have caused and sustained the backlog, and offer recommendations for reversing the backlog.
Speakers include:
Donald Kerwin, former executive director of CMS and Editor of the Journal of Migration and Human Security
Mimi Tsankov, President, National Association of Immigration Judges and member, Expert Advisory Group
Richard A. Boswell, Professor of Law, UC College of Law, San Francisco, and member, Expert Advisory Group
As well as additional members of the Expert Advisory Group:
Gregory Chen, Senior Director of Government Relations, American Immigration Lawyers Association
Anna Gallagher, Executive Director, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc.
Karen T. Grisez, Pro Bono Counsel, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver, and Jacobsen, LLP
Hon. Dana Leigh Marks (retired), President Emerita, National Association of Immigration Judges (in her personal capacity)
Michele Pistone, Professor of Law, Villanova University
Andrew Schoenholtz, Professor from Practice, Georgetown University Law Center
Denise Noonan Slavin, retired judge, Adjunct Professor, St. Thomas University School of Law
Charles Wheeler, Senior Attorney/Director Emeritus, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc.
The Center for Migration Studies (CMS) is a New York-based educational institute devoted to the study of international migration, to the promotion of understanding between immigrants and receiving communities, and to public policies that safeguard the dignity and rights of migrants, refugees, and newcomers. For more information, please visit www.cmsny.org.
To be bluntly honest, this panel of experts appears to be the group that an Administration seriously committed to restoring due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices to the “retail level” of U.S. justice would have hired in January 2021, to clean house 🧹 and institute lasting institutional reforms at America’s worst courts!
They have been “hiding in plain sight” for the past 2.5 years while Garland has been flailing and failing to bring order and long-overdue reforms to his tragically broken system!
Isn’t it time to finally get the “EOIR Clown Show” off the road before it causes more fatalities? Many experts think so! PHOTO CREDIT: Ellin Beltz, 07-04-16, Creative Commons License, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. Creator not responsible for above caption.
My long-time friend and former EOIR colleague, Peg Taylor, now Adjunct Professor of Law at Maryland Francis Carey School of Law writes:
As you may (or may not) know, ILS runs a fellowship for young diverse lawyers who have an interest in international law. The benefits this fellowship offers include: generous entree to ILS substantive programs and conferences — including an allowance for registration, travel, and lodging; waiver of Section dues; liberal publishing opportunities; and speciality-specific mentorships/sponsorships with experienced attorneys.
ILS is currently accepting applications for the Fellows Program. See attached information/application. It would be great, if you would share this information either on immigrationcourtside or with potentially interested young lawyers or both. Applications are due to Angela Benson, ILS Director of Membership, Meetings, and Marketing – angela.benson@americanbar.orgon or before Monday, June 26, 2023.
Thanks so much. Best. Peggy
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2023-2024 ABA International Law Section Diversity Fellowship
About the Fellows Program
The ABA International Law Section (ILS or Section) proudly sponsors a generous Diversity Fellows Program (“Program”). The Program robustly supports the ABA’s policy of active involvement and participation of diverse lawyers in the ABA, the Section, the profession, and the justice system. See ABA Goal III (to promote full and equal participation). The Program is for young barred lawyers (under 36 years old with five years or less of legal experience) who have an interest in international law and come from diverse backgrounds – including diverse races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and abilities/disabilities.
The application period for the term running from September 2023 to August 2024 is now open. Among the opportunities available to the 3-5 selected Fellows will be:
· abundant entrée to ILS substantive programs and conferences – including an allowance for registration, travel, and lodging;
· waiver of Section dues;
· specialty-specific mentorships/sponsorships with experienced attorneys;
· membership in a close circle of Fellows and alumni of the Fellows program;
· appointments to Section leadership positions; and
· liberal publishing opportunities.
Fellows will be assigned to substantive ILS Committees. The Committee Chairs will engage Fellows in all aspects of committee membership, including projects involving policy formulation and program development. The ILS’ Diversity Officer and Membership Officer and their respective Deputies will also work with Fellows, monitoring their progress and providing periodic reports to ILS’ Administration Committee.
Fellowship Eligibility
Successful applicants will demonstrate that they work in the international legal arena and/or that they have a deep interest in international law. They will further show that they are 36 years old or younger and at least one year out of law school. Applicants will also document that they have been admitted to a bar and that their admission took place less than 6 years prior to the date of their Program application. In furtherance of its goal to make the Fellowships available to a diverse group of young lawyers, application reviewers will take information regarding applicants’ race, ethnicity, disabilities (if any), and gender/sexual identities into account. See ABA Goal III.
If an applicant is not a member of the ABA or the Section at the time of application, such applicant will be required to become a dues-paying member of the ABA upon a grant of the Program application. The Section will, however, cover Section dues.
Fellows’ Responsibilities
During their Fellowship, Fellows will be required to produce specific deliverables, as directed by the ILS Diversity Officer. At a minimum, Fellows will: engage in active Committee participation, as the Section requires of all Section Leaders; regularly communicate with their Committee Chair, the Diversity Officer, the Membership Officer, and their Section mentor and complete progress reports.[1] Fellows will be required to sign a Fellowship Agreement with ILS. Should a Fellow fail to comply with the terms of the Fellowship, the Section will automatically stop all support – including but not limited to financial support.
Application Requirements
Applicants for the Section Diversity Fellows Program must submit:
· a cover letter explaining why the Section should consider their application;
· a fully executed application, addressing all the application questions;
· two letters of recommendation; and
· documentation of the requisite bar membership.
Complete applications must be submitted to Angela Benson, ILS Director of Membership, Meetings, and Marketing at angela.benson@americanbar.org. on or before Monday, June 26, 2023.
2023-2024 ABA International Law Section Diversity Fellowship Application
Applicant Information:
Name:
Firm/Company:
Address:
City: State: Zip:
Country:
Email:
Area of Practice:
Are you an ABA member? Are you a member of any Sections?
Yes ____ No ____
Are you a member of the Section of International Law?
Yes ___ No ___
Describe your interest in being a Diversity Fellow of the Section of International Law and how you plan to accomplish your goals and be of service to the Section (Max 500 words).
Describe your Section of International Law activities including leadership roles, programs that you have organized, Section meetings attended. If you are not a Section member, then describe which committees you hope to join, how that will support the advancement of your career in international law, and how you are planning to achieve that goal through this Fellowship within the Section. (Max 500 words) http://www.americanbar.org/groups/international_law/committees.html
Describe your leadership and participation roles in other bar associations including state, local, minority or foreign bars and your involvement in international law related activities/practice/etc. (Max 500 words).
7. Please describe what diversity and inclusion and international law initiatives and programs you have been involved in and how, through this Fellowship program, you are planning to reach out to other lawyers of diverse backgrounds and have them involved in the Section of International Law. (Max 500 words).
This class will cover the constitutional and political framework for the U.S. Immigration System, enforcement and adjudication agencies, immigrants, nonimmigrants, removals and deportations, detention and bond, immigration hearings, judicial review, grounds for removal and inadmissibility, “crimmigration,” immigration reform, “Chevron” deference, refugee and asylum status and other international protections. It will also include analyzing major immigration cases like INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421 (1987) (well-founded fear) and Matter of Kasinga, 21 I&N Dec. 357 (BIA 1996) (female genital mutilation).
Except, perhaps, in Florida and other GOP-controlled “mini-reichs” where hate, censorship, and persecution of vulnerable populations have become official policy! Is this REALLY the way the next generations of Americans want to live and be remembered by history? PHOTO: Public Realm
Last Wednesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — who is expected to announce his campaign for the presidency as soon as tomorrow — signed a gaggle of bills targeting LGBTQ youth.
In addition to those he had already signed into law — including a “Don’t Say Gay” measure barring teachers from mentioning sexual orientation or gender identity and another prohibiting gender-affirming care — his latest laws expand the state’s prohibition on classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity, require that students use bathrooms associated with their sex assigned at birth, prohibit adults from taking children to see drag shows, and bar teachers from asking students about their preferred pronouns.
Another of the bills DeSantis just signed into law allows the state of Florida to take transgender minors away from parents who help them obtain gender-affirming care.
In raging against gender-affirming care, DeSantis lied that “they’re literally chopping off the private parts of young kids.” In fact, genital surgery is rarely, if ever, done under the age of 18. It’s not even all that common for adults. DeSantis is lying about it to scare people.
Meanwhile, the Republican presidential frontrunner has made it clear that trans people have no place in his vision of America:
“I will sign a new executive order instructing every federal agency to cease all programs that promote the concepts of sex and gender transitions at any age. I will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth.”
***
My friends, these scare tactics are dangerous. Recent analysis found a 70% increase in hate crimes against LGBTQ Americans between 2020 and 2021, as the surge of these anti-LGBTQ bills began. And that’s only counting hate crimes that get reported. The years 2020 and 2021 each set a new record for the number of trans people murdered in America.
**
The cruelest irony is that these Republican bills pretending to protect children are putting our most vulnerable children at greater risk.
LGBTQ kids are more than four times likelier than non-LGBTQ kids to attempt suicide, especially transgender young people.
Gender-affirming care reduces that risk. That is why it is life-saving.
“Don’t Say Gay” laws also strip away potentially life-saving support. A teacher who positively and respectfully discusses sexual orientation and gender identity won’t turn a straight kid gay. But such a discussion will make an LGBTQ student 23% less likely to attempt suicide.
The tragic truth is that “Don’t Say Gay” laws and bans on gender-affirming care are causing more young lives to be needlessly lost.
Laws that threaten to take transgender minors away from their families if they are receiving gender-affirming care will cause these young people even more trauma.
If they were really worried about children undergoing life-altering medical procedures, they wouldn’t pass abortion bans that force teens to give birth or risk back-alley procedures.
What the GOP’s vendetta against the LGBTQ community really is, is a classic authoritarian tactic to vilify already marginalized people.
This is how fascism takes root.
We need to see DeSantis’s bills and similar bills signed by Republican governors across the land for what they are — attempts to use bigotry and hate to elevate their political standing.
And we need to see this Republican attack on LGBTQ Americans for what it is: a threat to all of our human rights.
[My thanks to Allan Piper for work on a version of today’s letter.]
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Meanwhile, as Caleb Ecarma reports for Vanity Fair, Florida teachers have had enough:
“For the first time, I’ve actually started talking to my investment guy about retirement,” Michael Woods, a teacher who has spent decades working in exceptional-student education for public schools in South Florida, tells me. “I’m a 30-year veteran who showed up every day, hardly calls in sick, but now I don’t want to be a teacher in Florida.” Most troubling to Woods—a gay man who teaches science and biology courses—is the ballooning list of laws that police classroom material, discriminate against LGBTQ+ educators and students, and restrict sex education. “They’re all so vague,” he says of DeSantis’s new laws. “Even things that used to be easy like human reproduction [for ninth graders], I now have to check with my co-teacher and ask, ‘Is this okay? Are we still allowed to teach this?’”
On Wednesday, the governor rubber-stamped a batch of four bills restricting LGBTQ+ rights and expanding the Parental Rights in Education Act—or, as critics have dubbed it, the “Don’t Say Gay” law. The new measures, which will be enforced at public and charter schools, ban educators from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity in pre-K through eighth grade, and place new, vague restrictions on sex education, including that such instructions “be age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”
This latest salvo was a bridge too far for many teachers, according to Rebecca Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, the largest labor union in the US. “I just talked to one teacher yesterday who is leaving and she said, ‘I can’t teach like this,’” Pringle tells me. “‘I can’t teach while worrying that they’re coming after my license, or I’m committing a felony.’ They’re leaving in protest.” Pringle says she has tried to convince teachers to stay in Florida, given the dearth of teachers in the state. But that discussion has been difficult to have, she says, with teachers who are facing death threats or harassment.
Case in point: One fifth-grade teacher in West Florida said this month that she was placed under investigation by the Florida Department of Education for showing her class Disney’s Strange World, a children’s movie that features an openly gay character. Jenna Barbee, the teacher at hand, said she played the film to give students a post-exam “brain break.” But when a local school board member learned of the showing, Barbee said, she was reported to state officials. Barbee told CNN that she had already submitted her resignation before the incident, in protest of the “politics and the fear of not being able to be who you are” in Florida public schools.
It appears that no educator has yet been prosecuted or charged under Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law or its legislation restricting books in schools. But as fears mount over their future implementation, parents are already witnessing the effects of shorthanded schools and overcrowded classrooms. “Last year, I saw several teachers leave, and we had substitutes for three, four months of the year,” says Reagan Miller, a parent in West Florida whose two children attend public school. “We had a teacher who taught advanced math at our middle school for years and years—he just left to go be a 911 operator,” she tells me, “which blows my mind, that becoming a 911 operator would be less stressful than being a teacher.”
. . . .
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My experience on the bench was that almost all the transgender individuals coming before me had attempted suicide on one or more occasions or expressed suicidal thoughts. To a person, they just wanted to be accepted, protected, and to live their own lives without harassment, interference, or fear. These are all things that today’s cowardly GOP “Brown Shirt Pols” would deny them.
The next generation is going to have to decide whether they want to live in a Nazi-inspired police “hate state” where individual freedoms are meaningless and cruelty, bullying, suppression, and betrayal are the norms. If not, then they had better get busy removing every GOP politico from every office — from local school boards and city councils to the Presidency.
How soon we forget the lessons of 1939! Perhaps that’s part of the GOP’s war on truth, education, and history!
Professor Hilary T. Fraser Cornell Law PHOTO: Cornell Law
Cornell Law School Afghanistan Assistance Clinic: Spring 2023 Report
May 15, 2023
By Hilary Fraser, Adjunct Professor
In our third semester offering the Afghan Assistance Clinic to Cornell law students, we saw a change in the type of cases and clients and a change in the kind of students. In our initial semester a year ago, our clinic students had backgrounds in immigration and human rights law. Our clients were all Fulbright recipients recently arrived in the United States, and the cases were rich with evidence of the likelihood of future persecution due to the client’s activism and training with western donor nations in building of democratic institutions.
At the start of this semester, there was some dismay that our clients’ cases seemed not as strong. Most clients were younger, some just freshmen in the United States. “I don’t think she has a case,” one student initially remarked about his client. Our students were also new to client representation, and more tentative about interviewing the clients and gathering facts.
To overcome these challenges, we decided to drill down on the fact that our clients had lived through a year or so of Taliban rule. Hadn’t they actually experienced persecution in the year or more that passed before they were able to escape? Weren’t their escape stories a symbol of their fears? The Taliban’s announcements that floggings and amputations were legitimate punishments; that women could not work, attend high school, leave home without a chaperone or visit parks and gyms; that universities were shuttered, the internet policed, passport offices closed and ‘vice’ and religion fastidiously monitored did not pose just future possibilities of harm, but rather defined the lives our clients had lived.
We also decided to drill down on our interpersonal skills and bring our own humanity into the client-student relationship. We needed to break through our clients’ reticence formed during a dangerous year of living in hiding from the Taliban regime. Nearly all of our clients told us how closely they guarded their plans to apply to school in the United States. Our clients also feared talking with us. Their families did not want to write support letters. We also had clients who came to the United States just before Kabul fell, but still hadn’t filed for asylum. We needed to work with the problem of depression.
Our students overcame these barriers in several ways.
One way our students engaged these reticent clients was through a shared immigration experience. Seven of our 12 class members were immigrants themselves, which helped form a bond of trust and a shared understanding of the vocabulary and process of immigration. Some took our clinic to understand better their parents’ experiences as immigrants to the United States. Some were interested in understanding better their own asylum or other residency applications.
Clever solutions also helped us elicit the clients’ stories. Related clients and clients who were friends and classmates from Afghanistan were represented by students who collaborated (with consent) on evidence and stories. This small-group approach made our process more efficient and our clients more comfortable. Also, we drew upon the experience of two classmates participating in the clinic for the third time, one as a Pro Bono Scholar and one as an indefatigable research assistant who won a public interest award from Cornell this semester. These senior students lent their experience to the class.
Last but not least, we made the Cornell connection. Twelve of our 15 clients this semester are scholars or students at Cornell. Working in person, even working with a shared sense of the environment and terrain of campus, forged relationships of trust. Plus, it just felt good to be helping a “neighbor.”
Our client narratives and legal claims eventually emerged. Political opinion was imputed from parents and from students’ choices of academic fields and universities. Race and religion were the most frequently claimed protected grounds, with Hazara ethnicity and atheism the most common fact patterns. “Westernized” individuals as a particular social group defined the elite group of young students talented enough to make it out of Afghanistan in a year when borders were mostly closed.
As a group, this semester’s clients could be seen as the younger “siblings” of the first groups of our clients. Growing up in a hopeful time of relative ease and opportunity in Afghanistan during occupation, they were free to foster their spirituality, self-expression, and learning. Please meet some of them here below. The client who we originally thought didn’t have a claim turned out to be one of our strongest cases, together with:
· A client who wrote and self-published on Amazon an English-language book on Love and God. A true romantic and humanist with a respect for literature.
· A client who obtained a U.S. visa just in time for her to escape a forced marriage and land in a top mathematics Ph.D. program in the United States.
· A client who grew up hearing the harrowing stories of parents who had suffered beatings and death threats under the Taliban and escaped to Iran, where treatment of Afghans is only slightly less horrific.
· A client who paints human representational art, fearlessly showing female bodies and intimate settings. Their work of 70+ canvases hides in residential attics in Afghanistan.
· A client whose transition to atheism is clearly recalled in a series of private conversations with peers and mentors, two of whom were murdered in honor killings pursuant to a fatwa.
· A client who was part of seminal schools for women and who received a leadership scholarship to attend school in the United States from an American fashion celebrity.
In short, our clinic honored these stories by acknowledging the teller’s experience. We realize that save for our small group of students, no one else other than the USCIS asylum adjudicator will hear these moving tales. Someday, we’d like to transform the stories into spoken-word theater!
This class was dedicated to learning immigration and helping their clients. Almost all this semester’s students will graduate to positions with large law firms. Their commitment to our clinic’s work signals that immigration has become a necessary skill set for both corporate and public interest lawyers.
Overall, we filed 15 asylum cases this semester, representing the collective work of 8 first-time students, 2 second-time students, a Pro Bono scholar, a research assistant, and an adjunct professor. By summer 2023, 30+ Afghan asylum applications filed by our clinic will remain pending, a terrific accomplishment in just 15 months of work.
Other landmarks reached this semester include:
o Our first semester clients received work permits or renewals.
o Two of our second semester clients had asylum interviews.
o All our second semester clients qualified for online work permit applications for the first time.
o We did a presentation for Weill Cornell medical students.
o We heard two presentations from Afghan political analysts.
o An Afghan student group was formed on campus through the work of our clients.
o We helped almost all the Afghans at Cornell who needed us.
o We kept abreast of dynamic changes in asylum practice – both at the border and expansion of parole programs.
o We mentored the law school’s 1L immigration clinic, which filed four other Afghan affirmative asylum applications.
This really hits home for me. I’m fresh off teaching with outstanding colleagues — subject matter experts and experienced civil and criminal litigators working together seamlessly —at the Sharma Crawford Clinic Litigation Trial College in Kansas City, KS. As usual, a large part of the “hands on” experience was coaching students on how to best elicit information from clients — across cultural and language barriers — and then to present their stories in a fashion that will be gripping and compelling to Asylum Officers, Immigration Judges, DHS Assistant Chief Counsel, and would make a great and “reader friendly” record for appellate judges and their clerks, should that step be necessary.
Consequently, I really appreciate the skill set that Hilary is helping her students develop! And, as we emphasized at our Trial College, this isn’t just an Immigration Court skill. No, it’s a “life skill” that folks will use over and over in their professional careers and personal lives!
The skills necessary to practice law these days start at the “retail level” of our justice system — the Immigration Courts. As I tell myGeorgetown Law students, “If you can win one of these cases, everything else in law and life will be a piece of cake!”
Thanks to my long-time friend and Hilary’s colleague, Professor Stephen Yale Loehr, for alerting me to this important achievement.
Cinder F. Rella Direct Sharma-Crawford Trial College Johnson County Community College May 5, 2023Trial College Faculty Celebrates Another Day of Teaching Extraordinary Lawyers To Be Strong, Smart, Fearless! May 5, 2023Trial College Grads Produce Happy Endings and Grateful Clients!After just three days of intensive study and engagement at the Sharma Crawford Trial College, immigration litigators actually look and feel different!
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Such an honor and pleasure to be a part of this distinguished and dedicated group.
To quote my faculty colleague Sarah Owings, “The world and the work are less lonely knowing you are all out there!” I think everyone else feels the same way, Sarah, my friend!
Sarah Owings, Esquire Partner Owings MacNorlin Atlanta, GA PHOTO: Firm
