Law students giving immigrants rare legal aid
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
- Organization: Associated Press
ITHACA, N.Y. -- She needed a dictionary to understand what she was reading, but when she did, Viravyne Chhim put down the case file and cried.
The words were crude. Infibulation: The sewing of skin to close off a female's genital area. Defibulation: The cutting open of those scars.
Chhim was a law student at Cornell University. Her African client was in detention in Arizona, hoping for asylum. Tying them together was a unique program that gives a small number of immigrants legal aid when they face deportation.
The Washington-based Pro Bono Appeals Project is the only one of its kind, matching immigrants at the appeals level with hundreds of volunteer lawyers. Some of its most enthusiastic members are the students at nine law schools, from Mississippi to Massachusetts, who often are working with a real client for the first time.
One of the first things students learn about an immigration case is that, unlike others detained in the United States, immigrants facing deportation are largely on their own. The government doesn't provide legal help and they don't have a right to appointed counsel.
Almost two-thirds of cases in immigration court have no representation, no matter the person's grasp of law, or English. Even the government says it's a problem, and it helped set up the pro bono project to make the system less confusing to immigrants and less frustrating for judges.
The African woman was lucky. As Chhim prepared to graduate this spring, she worked on the case four hours a day, searching legal databases for rape and mutilation. She needed to show that if the woman returned to Liberia, she risked such things again.
"I don't know how she'd have been able to do that in detention," Chhim said. The case was successful.
Of the 67 appeals the project took on last year, students like Chhim worked on 18.
"Students love working on these cases," said Steven Goldblatt, a law professor at Georgetown University. "They get totally wrapped up because the stakes are so high."
Each week, the government goes through new cases from immigration court and takes the first 12 that meet the project's criteria. The project chooses the most promising of the 12 cases and matches them with participating lawyers and law schools. When a match can't be found, the case is left to proceed alone, said coordinator Molly McKenna.
Almost two-thirds of the more than 240,000 cases in immigration court had no representation last year, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, part of the Justice Department. At the appeals level, 31 percent of the more than 42,000 cases last year had no lawyer.
"We will not stop thinking of ways to extend pro bono access for anybody," said Steven Lang, who became the EOIR's first pro bono coordinator in 2000 and helped set up the appeals project.
Some project lawyers said it's ironic that the strictest immigration proposal now in Congress would give more immigrants a lawyer. The bill sponsored by Wisconsin Republican John Sensenbrenner would make illegal immigrants felons, giving them the right to court-appointed counsel. For now, cases in immigration court are civil.
The difference is lost on some immigrants, especially the ones who fear anything official. Cornell won another case this spring even after the client went into hiding. The former child soldier from Uganda had won asylum, but when the government appealed his case, he disappeared.
"I think he thought he had lost," said Stephen Taeusch, a student on the case.
When the Department of Justice studied 281 pro bono project cases two years ago, it found 40 percent were successful.
Students rarely get to meet their clients. But during spring break in 2004, Cornell students Evan Fan and Victoria Hadfield drove to a detention center near Philadelphia. They had been working all spring with a man who had been caught with marijuana while re-entering the United States from Laos.
The students had talked with him by phone every week, through a translator. Just before driving down, they turned in a legal brief arguing he would be tortured back home because of his role with a Hmong army during the Vietnam War.
They knew he was worried. As they greeted him in the detention center, he broke down.
Then Hadfield did, too. "I started to see how much we can do as lawyers to change a person's life," Fan said.
Two weeks later, they heard they had won the appeal.
___
On the Web:
Pro Bono Appeals Project: http://www.cliniclegal.org/ProBono.html
Executive Office for Immigration Review: http://www.usdoj.gov/eoir/
The words were crude. Infibulation: The sewing of skin to close off a female's genital area. Defibulation: The cutting open of those scars.
Chhim was a law student at Cornell University. Her African client was in detention in Arizona, hoping for asylum. Tying them together was a unique program that gives a small number of immigrants legal aid when they face deportation.
The Washington-based Pro Bono Appeals Project is the only one of its kind, matching immigrants at the appeals level with hundreds of volunteer lawyers. Some of its most enthusiastic members are the students at nine law schools, from Mississippi to Massachusetts, who often are working with a real client for the first time.
One of the first things students learn about an immigration case is that, unlike others detained in the United States, immigrants facing deportation are largely on their own. The government doesn't provide legal help and they don't have a right to appointed counsel.
Almost two-thirds of cases in immigration court have no representation, no matter the person's grasp of law, or English. Even the government says it's a problem, and it helped set up the pro bono project to make the system less confusing to immigrants and less frustrating for judges.
The African woman was lucky. As Chhim prepared to graduate this spring, she worked on the case four hours a day, searching legal databases for rape and mutilation. She needed to show that if the woman returned to Liberia, she risked such things again.
"I don't know how she'd have been able to do that in detention," Chhim said. The case was successful.
Of the 67 appeals the project took on last year, students like Chhim worked on 18.
"Students love working on these cases," said Steven Goldblatt, a law professor at Georgetown University. "They get totally wrapped up because the stakes are so high."
Each week, the government goes through new cases from immigration court and takes the first 12 that meet the project's criteria. The project chooses the most promising of the 12 cases and matches them with participating lawyers and law schools. When a match can't be found, the case is left to proceed alone, said coordinator Molly McKenna.
Almost two-thirds of the more than 240,000 cases in immigration court had no representation last year, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, part of the Justice Department. At the appeals level, 31 percent of the more than 42,000 cases last year had no lawyer.
"We will not stop thinking of ways to extend pro bono access for anybody," said Steven Lang, who became the EOIR's first pro bono coordinator in 2000 and helped set up the appeals project.
Some project lawyers said it's ironic that the strictest immigration proposal now in Congress would give more immigrants a lawyer. The bill sponsored by Wisconsin Republican John Sensenbrenner would make illegal immigrants felons, giving them the right to court-appointed counsel. For now, cases in immigration court are civil.
The difference is lost on some immigrants, especially the ones who fear anything official. Cornell won another case this spring even after the client went into hiding. The former child soldier from Uganda had won asylum, but when the government appealed his case, he disappeared.
"I think he thought he had lost," said Stephen Taeusch, a student on the case.
When the Department of Justice studied 281 pro bono project cases two years ago, it found 40 percent were successful.
Students rarely get to meet their clients. But during spring break in 2004, Cornell students Evan Fan and Victoria Hadfield drove to a detention center near Philadelphia. They had been working all spring with a man who had been caught with marijuana while re-entering the United States from Laos.
The students had talked with him by phone every week, through a translator. Just before driving down, they turned in a legal brief arguing he would be tortured back home because of his role with a Hmong army during the Vietnam War.
They knew he was worried. As they greeted him in the detention center, he broke down.
Then Hadfield did, too. "I started to see how much we can do as lawyers to change a person's life," Fan said.
Two weeks later, they heard they had won the appeal.
___
On the Web:
Pro Bono Appeals Project: http://www.cliniclegal.org/ProBono.html
Executive Office for Immigration Review: http://www.usdoj.gov/eoir/
Topics:
