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Center for Social Justice - Recent Developments
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Political Asylum, Deportation and Torture
In the current academic year, Prof. Lori Nessel, Clinical Fellow
Anjum Gupta, and students from the Immigration and Human Rights
Clinic have won important political asylum, torture and trafficking
cases and Prof. Nessel's expertise with the Torture Convention has
been recognized by the New York Times. In one political asylum case,
a man from Cameroon had been severely tortured by the authorities
because of his political opposition to the current regime. The
client had initially filed a pro se asylum petition, but was denied.
Clinic students, including Ingrid Echeverria, Joseph Yar, and Parisi
Salimi interviewed the client, prepared him for trial and submitted
supporting documents to the Immigration Court, including a brief, an
affidavit, a new application, and supporting exhibits. Thorough
preparation was rewarded when the clinic prevailed before the
immigration court at a subsequent hearing, with the court granting
the asylum petition from the bench and the government waiving
appeal.
In three other instances, clinic students (including Romana Kaleem,
Chantal Okoh, Mark Williams and Cheryl Hunt) prepared their cases so
thoroughly that asylum was granted at the initial administrative
level without the need for an adversarial hearing. Nicole Carrara,
Michele Lago, Iram Hafeez and Brian Caney also won an important
victory, gaining a trafficking visa for a domestic worker who was
lured to the United States on false pretenses and then held and
abused as an indentured servant.
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