This past Wednesday, RWU Law and local community organizations celebrated the university's new Immigration Clinic, a legal clinic pairing law students, under the guidance of a full-time professor, with needy immigrants from around the state.
Calling it a relatively small footprint, Dean David A. Logan from RWU Law stated "this clinic will educate our future attorneys and help our immigrant community."
According to Professor Mary Holper, director of the Immigration Law Clinic at RWU, the clinic will represent detained immigrants facing deportation. The students will brainstorm defense strategies for clients, make arguments at the federal immigration court in Boston and represent non-citizens in their applications for relief from removal.
Examples of these applications include asylum; other relief based on fear of persecution in the country of removal; waivers of deportation for long-term residents of the U.S.; adjustment of status for non-citizens with U.S. citizen family and relief for victims of domestic violence.
The clinic will also prepare applications for bene-
fits under the immigration laws and represent non-citizens in their interviews for such benefits before the local U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) office.
"Students will conduct Know Your Rights presentations for the immigrant communities in Rhode Island and for non-citizens who are detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the Bristol County House of Corrections in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts," stated Holper. "They will also conduct intake interviews following these presentations and provide consultations under the supervision of a faculty member."
At a time when the crackdown of illegal immigrants is growing in Rhode Island, southern New England and nationally, the clinic reflects a great need, a need to navigate immigrants through a complex immigration law, according to an immigrant advocate.
"It is never a bad time, but this is a good time to be starting the Immigration Clinic in Rhode Island. There is a need to help immigrants through this complicated legal system," stated Carl Krueger, Immigration Attorney, from the Feinstein Center for Citizenship and Immigration Services, International Institute of Rhode Island.
Since 2007, federal agents have raided a factory in New Bedford, Mass., on federal immigration charges; R.I. Governor Don Carcieri announced a crackdown on illegal immigrants, demanding state police and prison officials take the necessary steps to identify illegal immigrants for deportation, resulting in six courthouses being raided; and a Chinese immigrant died while being held at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency ended its contract with the jail after an investigation revealed there were multiple instances of non-compliance with the agency's policies and procedures.
"We saw what happened at the Wyatt detention center, you know what happened in New Bedford," stated Logan to the Associated Press. "This is a very big issue of public policy, and there's frankly very few lawyers in Rhode Island that specialize in this."
Though criminal defendants are entitled to court-appointed lawyers, the same privilege does not extend to civil deportation proceedings. Holper stated to the Associated Press, "that creates an urgent need for lawyers who can help clients navigate the complex federal code of immigration law, helping non-English speakers make sense of documents that order their deportation or argue for bond for immigrants in detention."
Holper added that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks brought more enforcement of 1996 changes to immigration law that essentially widened the list of crimes for which a person could be deported. That, in turn, has brought more focus on detained immigrants.
"The expansion of detention, it's made a little bit more of a human rights, a due process, a civil rights issue than I would say it was pre-9/11," said Holper to the Associated Press.
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