Immigrant's Rights Clinic
About the Clinic: In the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, students focus on fighting unlawful immigration detention through federal habeas corpus litigation. The Clinic has two tracks: “in-house” and “outplacement.” The in-house clinic works directly with clients who are in immigration detention by filing habeas corpus actions in federal court to free them. Over the past year, the in-house clinic secured the release of 15 clients from immigration detention. Students interview clients, draft declarations, gather documentary evidence, and prepare habeas petitions. Meanwhile, the outplacement clinic places students with nonprofit and government immigration defense organizations, including public defender offices. Students there work under the supervision of immigration attorneys on a range of matters, but primarily habeas corpus. If you want to free people from unlawful immigration imprisonment and learn about federal litigation and immigration law in the process, please consider joining the clinic.
Classroom Component: Operates in a seminar manner, focusing on case strategy and analysis, skills and the representation of clients.
Fieldwork Component: Students work inhouse on immigration detention cases or work primarily with local immigrants’ rights projects involving law reform or litigation. Students directly engage in client interviewing and counseling, case planning and legal writing, and preparation of clients for hearings before immigration judges or immigration examiners.
Course Instructor: The course is taught by Professor Boswell and Jonathan Abel.
Open to: 3rd, 4th, 5th, or 6th semester JD students, LLM students and MLS students. Foreign language ability is helpful but not required. It is not possible to concurrently enroll in the same semester in both this course and another live-client clinic, legal or judicial externship, or the Startup Legal Garage.
6 units: 2-unit non-GPA graded class component and 4-unit fieldwork component, graded pass-fail. All 6 units count as experiential.
Requirements for Course: While students who are currently enrolled or have taken Immigration Law are preferred, those with equivalent experience are encouraged to apply and should include this information in their application statement. Refugee Law is helpful, but not required.
Students apply to the Clinic the semester prior to their enrollment in the clinic through instructions provided to them via the Weekly and emails from the Associate Dean of Experiential Learning.
Please send questions to Professor Boswell at boswellr@uclawsf.edu or abeljonathan@uclawsf.edu