Panel Discussion at the Center for American Progress
Alerted in the summer of 2006 that immigrant families were being detained at a former prison in Taylor, Texas, UT Law’s Immigration Clinic spent the last year utilizing a combination of advocacy, activism, and litigation to change life for residents at the controversial facility. Read more …
Student attorneys in the Immigration Clinic provide crucial representation to vulnerable low-income immigrants before the immigration courts, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Board of Immigration Appeals and the federal courts. Through legal representation of clients and participation in the classroom component of the clinic, students learn substantive immigration law, practice important legal advocacy techniques and explore different models for ethical, responsible and effective lawyering.
Student attorneys in the clinic take on primary responsibility for their cases, with guidance and mentoring from the clinic faculty. Each semester, the clinic’s student attorneys conduct a range of lawyering activities including: client interviewing, development of case strategy, brief writing, preparation of witnesses, and presentation of cases before the courts and the immigration agency.
The cases handled by the Immigration Clinic are diverse and illustrate the breadth of immigration practice. The clinic represents clients seeking asylum based on political persecution or religious, ethnic or gender-based violence in their home countries, as well as victims of domestic violence here in the United States seeking benefits under the Violence Against Women Act (“VAWA”). The clinic also defends long time permanent residents and other immigrants facing deportation, sometimes petitioning for their release from detention as well as handling their cases on the merits. In addition, the clinic represents individuals born abroad who claim United States citizenship through their parents but whose status has not been recognized by immigration authorities. A final important component of the clinic’s caseload involves work at the T.Don Hutto Family Detention Center. Students represent children and their parents who seek asylum and release from the facility. In a recent semester, student attorneys in the clinic achieved the release of ten families detained at Hutto.
Some of the clinic’s cases are handled administratively before DHS and involve an interview process while other cases require full trials in the immigration courts, including document submission and witness examination. Yet other cases involve appellate brief writing and legal argument before the federal and immigration courts.
The Immigration Clinic’s clients hail from all over the world. The clinic has handled cases from, among other countries, Colombia, El Salvador, Eritrea, Guatemala, Guinea, Honduras, India, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, Somalia, Togo, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe.
The Immigration Clinic’s faculty and student attorneys advocate on broader immigration issues and policy as well. As reflected in the accompanying article, the clinic has taken a lead role in challenging the immigration detention of families at the Hutto facility through federal court litigation and, most recently, through participation in a hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights regarding the detention of families at Hutto. The clinic is currently providing support in documenting the impacts of the border wall scheduled to be built along the Texas/Mexico border.