A report on 2010
2010 was the UW Immigration Law Clinic’s winningest year since the
clinic’s inception. Clinic students successfully represented six clients in
removal proceedings. Five of those clients had lived in the U.S. as lawful
permanent residents (or “green card” holders) for years, but faced deportation
for minor criminal convictions. In each case, clinic students persuaded an
immigration judge to cancel their client’s deportation. In the sixth case,
advanced clinic student Sasha Lazarevich (’11) secured a grant of asylum from
the immigration judge for her client, who had suffered a forced abortion in
China. About the victory, Sasha stated, “The experience of working on this
asylum case was exceptionally meaningful to me both in terms of how much I
learned and because it enabled me to make a significant difference in the life
of my client and her family. I will always look back at my time in the advanced
clinic as one of the most important experiences I have had in law school. It
reminded me why I wanted to become an attorney in the first place.”
In addition to handling a number of removal cases, Immigration Law Clinic
students triumphed in the cases of two affirmative asylum seekers. An
affirmative asylum seeker is someone who is not yet in removal proceedings. Both
of those applications had been prepared and filed by students during the 2009
Immigration Law Clinic, but dragged on into 2010. One of those clients,
initially represented by clinic students Emily Jarvis (’09) and Kianoush Naficy
(’10), involved a woman who had fled Guinea after having suffered female genital
cutting and also having been the victim of a violent beating by government
officials. During the 2009-2010 school year, Kianoush continued to work on her
client’s case as an advanced clinic student, and in the summer of 2010, Kianoush
accompanied her client to her asylum interview. Upon learning of the favorable
decision, Emily stated, “[I]t is hard to imagine anyone successfully navigating
the asylum process from start to finish on their own, let alone someone who has
already experienced so much trauma.”
In 2010, the Immigration Law Clinic also prevailed in an application for a
refugee waiver for a detained individual and represented two other individuals
in their adjustment, or green card, applications.