ASU Law Students Represent Children in Immigration Cases

 

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This feature is the second in a series highlighting the recipients of the 2007 President’s Medal for Social Embeddedness.

 

Every year, Aryah Somers and Liz Sweet find themselves responsible for nearly 1200 children.

 

This is because as children’s attorneys for the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, a nonprofit organization that provides free legal and social services to detained immigrants, Somers and Sweet are charged with representing and seeking pro bono legal representation for hundreds of children who have come to Arizona to escape gang recruitment, sexual exploitation, indentured servitude, or domestic violence in their home countries. While the Florence Project seeks to represent as many children as possible, due to lack of funding and staff, the Florence Project cannot ensure representation for all the children they meet.

 

Realizing how limited legal resources for immigrants are in the United States due to her years spent consulting on immigration cases and her own experiences as a twelve-year-old immigrant from El Salvador, Evelyn Cruz, an associate clinical professor in the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, teamed up with the Florence Project in 2005 to create the Immigration Law & Policy Clinic. Thanks to the clinic, a class of six ASU law students can now develop cases for and represent immigrant children at legal hearings.

 

Each semester, Cruz’s students take on two new immigrant child cases from the Florence Project. From 2005 to 2006, the students performed 4652 hours of pro bono service by providing legal assistance to 100 children in immigration deportation hearings and representing 10 children at immigration and immigration appeals courts.

 

“The amount of work the students put in benefits the whole system of representation for children in Arizona,” states Somers who notes that nearly 90 percent of detained immigrants go unrepresented because they cannot afford legal counsel. “It’s difficult for some pro bono attorneys to dedicate the amount of time the students do, and without the clinic we wouldn’t be able to continue working on all the cases we need to.”

 

As members of the clinic, students provide legal assistance at deportation hearings and learn how their clients can qualify for legal status. Students also collaborate with pro bono physicians and psychologists who can show the court a child has been abused or traumatized in their country, enabling the child to gain asylum or a Special Immigrant Juvenile Status Visa. Many law students feel these experiences give them a much better perspective on the legal system.

 

“In other courses you just deal with hypotheticals, but this is more diverse. We get to talk to clients, write actual briefs, and know all the facts about a case since we discovered them ourselves – which is a lot more meaningful than reading a textbook of cases,” says Cheryl Kane, a second-year law student who feels that knowing her actions will make a direct impact on the lives of her clients gives her the extra incentive to do a good job.

 

A unique feature of the clinic is its ability to let students represent their clients in actual legal hearings.

 

“The students get to be attorneys thanks to student practice laws in Arizona that state that students can act as attorneys when they’re under the supervision of a faculty member or an attorney,” says Cruz. “So they are working under my license and get to present their cases to the court.”

 

Such real world practice enables the law students to see some very tangible results from their work. Recently, third-year law student Dennis Farar and his team, in concert with a pro bono attorney from Lewis & Rocca and attorneys from the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, got the government to grant a lawful permanent resident status for a Mexican girl who had been abandoned by her family.

 

The relationships students develop with their clients also enable them to continue aiding their clients even after their cases are over by helping immigrants open a bank account or find an apartment. Other students have developed legal theories that can aid in future immigration cases.

 

“Several students successfully persuaded an immigration judge to grant asylum in a case involving a child who was refusing gang recruitment in his country,” says Somers. “They used a theory called imputed political opinion in an argument similar to child soldier arguments made by children who refuse to join government, military or police forces based on conscience or a political point of view, since one of the strongest grounds for winning asylum is political opinion. And this helps us in our work because it exposes judges to new theories that help protect children in later cases.”

 

For Cruz, sharing such useful information about immigration law is one of the most important ways the clinic impacts the community.

 

“With the limited amount of immigration agencies out there, you’ve got to find ways of maximizing the things you can do,” she states. “So Florence shares information about their cases with us, and all of our legal briefs are shared not only with Florence but also other agencies across the country to help in their cases.”

 

Along with their successes, however, Cruz’s students also encounter challenges. Because their cases are based on the fact that their clients are minors, if their clients turn eighteen before their cases are resolved, they can be deported as legal adults. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that the Department of Homeland Security can appeal an immigrant child’s case, knowing the client will turn eighteen while the case is pending. 

 

Yet such challenges do not deter the clinic’s students, who only feel motivated to handle their clients’ cases more quickly and thoroughly, often by enhancing their knowledge of immigration issues. Several students accomplish this by providing one-on-one consultations every other Friday at Friendly House, a local social services agency that answers immigration questions for the more than 100 people who can come to the agency some Fridays seeking assistance with their immigration cases. 

 

Cruz feels that by providing such opportunities the clinic will help students become more successful attorneys who will continue benefiting their community.

 

“The students are trained in such a way that in the future when they go into firms they will know how to provide pro bono services, how to handle youth, and how to work in cross-cultural representation,” she states. “The court, local practitioners, and community leaders have all been impressed with the caliber of our student’s legal skills.”

 

The Immigration Law & Policy Clinic is a six credit, semester-long course open to second and third-year law students in the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. Students spend an average of 300 hours a semester providing legal services to immigrant children and research assistance to pro bono attorneys while gaining real world legal experience. To learn more, visit the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law web site.

 

The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project is a nonprofit organization that provides free legal and social services to men, women, and children detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Since 2001, the project’s Detained Immigrant and Refugee Children’s Initiative has provided empowering legal assistance and representation to hundreds of immigrant and refugee children. Learn more by visiting their web site.

 

Friendly House is a social services agency that serves 40,000 families, youth, and children a year. The agency provides the community with services that address the problems of immigration and the naturalization of new immigrants as well as Youth Services, Adult Education & Workforce Development, and a full range of Family Services and Home Care for the Elderly & Disabled. Find out more by visiting their web site.

 

Doctors of the World is an international health and human rights nonprofit organization working where health is diminished or endangered by violations of human rights and civil liberties. Their pro bono physicians and psychologists provide diagnoses for immigrant children which can strengthen their legal cases. Learn more by visiting their web site.

 

ASU Partners
Evelyn H. Cruz
Ana B. Moore
Dennis Farar
Gabriel Gomez-Leyba
Cheryl Kane
Sebastian Zavala
Sara Giner
Anya McLean

 

Community Partners
Aryah Somers, Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project
Richard Tobin, Lewis & Rocca, LLP
Friendly House
Doctors of the World
Phoenix Immigration Court
Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law

 

Michael Jung, ASU in the Community feature writer
Michael.Jung@asu.edu
480-727-8339

 

Discover how Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law students work with the community though other socially embedded programs, including the Advocacy Program Against Domestic Violence Program and Homeless Legal Assistance Project.

 

And learn more about how ASU is engaged with the community by visiting ASU in the Community’s Program Database which connects you to a wide variety of specific ASU outreach efforts.