Group photo of immigration students

Immigration Clinic

Students in the Immigration Clinic represent vulnerable low-income immigrants from all over the world before immigration courts, federal courts, and the Department of Homeland Security. The caseload varies each term, but the clinic’s primarily focus is on detention and deportation defense and asylum cases. Students gain hands-on experience by taking on the primary responsibility and decision-making authority for their cases, under the mentorship of the clinic directors.

 

Cases and Projects

Immigration Clinic Collaborates with Grassroots Leadership to Publish Report Documenting Problems at Immigration Detention Center

In March 2021, the Texas Law Immigration Clinic published with Grassroots Leadership a report entitled “Cruelty and Corruption:  Contracting to Lock up Immigrant Women for Profit at the Hutto Detention Center.”  The Hutto detention center, located in Taylor, Texas, holds women seeking asylum in the United States.  For years, the Texas Law Immigration Clinic has provided representation and legal information to women detained at the facility and has also engaged in advocacy and litigation to address problems at the detention center.  The report with Grassroots Leadership details the history of legally questionable contracts and gaps in accountability that have allowed Hutto to remain open despite years of abuses at the facility.

Addressing the Cruelty of the “Remain in Mexico” Program

Since the rollout of the “Remain in Mexico” program in south Texas in the summer of 2019, the clinic has engaged in efforts to address the extreme harms suffered by asylum seekers trapped in northern Mexico during their U.S. Immigration Court proceedings as a result of this new policy.

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What Experts Think About the Border

The Clinic authored and joined with dozens of law and social science professors to submit an “EXPERT RESPONSE TO THE FINAL EMERGENCY INTERIM REPORT OF THE CBP FAMILIES AND CHILDREN CARE PANEL OF THE HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISORY COUNCIL” in May 2019. The response discusses current immigration realities at the US-Mexico border.

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