Tag: Conor Bednarski

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/06/asylum-clinic-wins-release-cuban-doctor-detained-ice

Asylum clinic wins release for Cuban doctor detained by ICE

By Owen Lubozynski | June 1, 2021

In April 2020, COVID-19 reached the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention Center in Eloy, Arizona. Dr. Merlys Rodriguez Hernandez, who had been detained there for six months, said she knew it would spread quickly.

Rodriguez Hernandez is originally from Cuba, where she and her husband, Lazaro, practiced medicine before they were forced to flee government persecution, she said. When they reached the U.S. border, they applied for asylum. Both were detained, in separate facilities, Merlys said. After eight months, Lazaro was granted protection from having to return to Cuba. Merlys’ petition, based on identical circumstances, was tried in a different immigration court – and denied, she said.

Cornell Law School’s Asylum Clinic took her case, under the direction of Stephen Yale-Loehr, professor of immigration law practice, and Ian M. Kysel, visiting assistant clinical professor of law. Law students Conor Bednarski, J.D. ’21, and Michelle Zhu, J.D. ’21, litigated an appeal to the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals.

Conor Bednarski

Michelle Zhu

Meanwhile, Rodriguez Hernandez was trapped in a detention system raging with COVID-19, she said. She fell ill with the virus in May 2020 and spent 40 days in isolation, suffering from joint pain, body aches and severe diarrhea and confined to a cell she was expected to sanitize herself, she said. Tara Pilato, co-executive director emerita of the Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights at Weill Cornell Medicine, who consulted on the case, observed that “the conditions Merlys reported were not only inhumane, but against all best practices for caring for patients with COVID-19.”

Kayleigh Yerdon

“Watching this preventable tragedy unfold week after week, as we were told to shelter in place, was the hardest part of working on this case,” Bednarski said.

As the pandemic spread, Bednarski and Zhu tried to secure Rodriguez Hernandez’s release, and then supported a collaboration with pro bono counsel who filed a habeas corpus writ in federal court.

Kayleigh Yerdon, J.D. ’21, took the lead on the case during the fall 2020 term. With Spanish interpretation assistance from Cornell doctor of juridical science student Ana Ruival, LLM ’19, Yerdon won her client’s release on bond. Rodriguez Hernandez was released in October 2020, after 13 months in detention, Yerdon said.

“As a law student, being able to step into court for the first time via teleconference and win, knowing my client would walk free as a result, was just an incredible experience,” Yerdon said. She also took on Lazaro’s case, successfully litigating a motion to reopen his case, and eventually securing him asylum, she said. Yerdon was recently honored with the Law School’s Freeman Award for Civil-Human Rights, in part in recognition for her clinical work.

Meryls’ case shows that some of the most harmful flaws in the immigration system can be addressed by applying basic rights principles, Kysel said.

Rodriguez Hernandez and her husband are now living in Kentucky as they work to appeal the denial of her request for asylum. She said she hopes to become an advocate for immigrants who remain detained during the pandemic. Meanwhile, the legal team has continued its efforts to engage in other advocacy and to amplify the impact of their legal work on the doctor’s case, Kysel and Yale-Loehr said.

Recently, Rodriguez Hernandez told her story in a first-person essay in the New England Journal of Medicine, with the support of her Cornell Law clinic team and a team from the Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights, led by Pilato and Dr. Gunisha Kaur, assistant professor of anesthesiology.

“As one of our colleagues in the medical field, Merlys’ harrowing experience deserved attention from a medical-legal perspective,” said Pilato and Kaur. “The inhumane conditions in ICE detention centers have triggered some of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in the country.”

In the piece, Rodriguez Hernandez wrote, “It is a bitter irony that while the first waves of the pandemic ravaged the U.S., I remained in a detention system when I could have made a difference to patients in a health care system in dire need of providers.”

Owen Lubozynski is a freelance writer for Cornell Law School.

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Thanks to my good friend and renowned Immigration “Practical Scholar/Expert” Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr @ Cornell Law for alerting me to this item. And, many many congrats to these amazing students and members of the NDPA!😎👍

Note that in the dangerous and defective “court system” being run by Garland, the Respondent continues to struggle with appeals of her asylum denial even though her husband’s identical case was GRANTED! Worse yet, both cases should have been “no brainer” asylum grants that could have been rapidly granted by the Asylum Office without detention or Immigration Court in a properly functioning system with expert judges setting correct asylum precedents at the BIA.

No wonder this system is continuing to deny justice, threaten lives, waste resources, and create backlogs under Garland! As noted in the above posting, even the New England Journal of Medicine is up in arms about this outrageous situation and mockery of our legal process!

But, Garland and his merry band at DOJ and EOIR seem impervious to criticism, rationality, or the rule of law! And to date, they have shown little or no willingness to engage constructively with progressive human rights and Immigration experts. I guess that’s what “Miller Lite Justice” is all about! 

There is simply no excuse for Garland’s continued mishandling of EOIR and asylum law generally! And, bureaucratic “Dedicated Dockets” run from the Falls Church Tower won’t solve the problem. Not by a long shot!

Progressive advocates and members of the NDPA need to stay energized, stay angry, and keep letting the Biden Administration feel the outrage at Garland’s inexcusable continued mishandling of EOIR! These problems will NEVER be solved with the group currently calling the shots at EOIR!

So, the question remains, with all this expertise available and some obvious solutions to some really dumb and life-threatening procedures and policies, why are Garland and Mayorkas “groping in the dark”  rather than bringing in and empowering the progressive experts who will solve these problems? 

Due Process Forever! Let your continuing outrage at EOIR’s failure to deliver due process and fundamental fairness with efficiency and humanity be heard and felt by the Biden Administration! Don’t take “Good Enough for Government Work” as Equal Justice in America from Democrats or Republicans! “Just say no” to more “Miller Lite Dred Scottification” of asylum seekers and other migrants! Wonder why our nation is struggling with racial justice? Look no further than Garland’s mishandling of EOIR!

President Biden has put Vice President Harris in charge of border issues and racial justice reforms. Progressive advocates should let her know directly that Garland is NOT getting the job done at Justice, and that they are sick and tired of not being consulted and having their expert candidates for EOIR snubbed in favor of Trump holdovers and non-progressives! If her “legacy” includes EOIR’s racially and gender insensitive, due-process denying, intentionally non-diverse “Kangaroo Courts” carrying out the Miller/Sessions/Barr White Nationalist nativist agenda, it won’t be a “good look” for her or her future! And, it most certainly will be bad, perhaps fatal, for our nation’s future as a liberal democracy!

PWS

06-02-21