Human Rights Law Commons^™

Divided States Of America: Why The Right To Counsel Is Imperative For Migrant Children In Removal Proceedings, Catrina L. Guerrero

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Not Your Average Summer Camp: Children In Immigration Detention, Cindy Izquierdo

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Asymmetries In Immigration Protection, Sabrineh Ardalan

Brooklyn Law Review

As increasing numbers of immigrants face deportation, a major asymmetry in existing immigration procedures requires attention. Individuals who are deported from the United States and attempt to reenter are afforded an opportunity to prove their fears of return to their home countries, whereas those with prior deportation orders who have remained in the United States are not. This difference is based on the false premise that the latter have already had their day in court and do not need an additional layer of screening. This article fills a critical gap in the existing scholarship, which has thus far failed to …

Out Of Options: The Obstructions Hindering Victims Of Non-State Actor Violence Under Current Asylum Law, Kenneth D. Law Jr.

Brooklyn Law Review

Each year tens of thousands of immigrants head to the United States’ shores in the hope of achieving their version of the “American Dream.” This dream is now more elusive than it has ever been due to the Trump Administration’s attempts to limit legal migration by, to an extent, removing certain avenues of entry. Specifically, the Trump Administration severely hindered the ability of victims of domestic and gang violence to apply for one of the few forms of relief afforded to them: asylum. This note analyzes how decisions such as former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ opinion in Matter of A-B- …

Law School News: Rwu Law Professors File Emergency Covid-19 Lawsuit 04-12-2020, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Environmental Justice In Little Village: A Case For Reforming Chicago’S Zoning Law, Charles Isaacs

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Chicago’s Little Village community bears the heavy burden of environmental injustice and racism. The residents are mostly immigrants and people of color who live with low levels of income, limited access to healthcare, and disproportionate levels of dangerous air pollution. Before its retirement, Little Village’s Crawford coal-burning power plant was the lead source of air pollution, contributing to 41 deaths, 550 emergency room visits, and 2,800 asthma attacks per year. After the plant’s retirement, community members wanted a say on the future use of the lot, only to be closed out when a corporation, Hilco Redevelopment Partners, bought the lot …

Trafficking To The Rescue?, Julie A. Dahlstrom

Faculty Scholarship

Since before the dawn of the #MeToo Movement, civil litigators have been confronted with imperfect legal responses to gender-based harms. Some have sought to envision and develop innovative legal strategies. One new, increasingly successful tactic has been the deployment of federal anti-trafficking law in certain cases of domestic violence and sexual assault. In 2017, for example, victims of sexual assault filed federal civil suits under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (“TVPRA”) against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Plaintiffs argued that the alleged sexual assault conduct amounted to “commercial sex acts” and sex trafficking. Other plaintiffs’ lawyers have similarly invoked trafficking …

Clark Memorandum: Spring 2020, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Byu Law School Alumni Association, J. Reuben Clark Law Society

The Clark Memorandum

• Of Rights and Responsibilities: The Social Ecosystem of Religious Freedom
• I am the Woman Who Can
• Flashes of Light: Thoughts on Circumstantial Evidence
• Capital Markets and Human Flourishing

Read on Issuu

Covid 19 In U.S. Migrant Detention Centers: The Call For Freedom In The Face Of A Global Pandemic, Salma Rojas

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

My research paper investigates the responses of the U.S. immigration detention system to the COVID 19 pandemic and determines the capacity of the detention centers to keep detained individuals alive and healthy. As I analyze their capacities, I look to past detention center outbreaks, updated public health resources, reports on ICE facility conditions and the testimonies of migrant people who were detained during the COVID 19 crisis. The urgency of the COVID 19 pandemic is why I dedicate part of my paper to what needs to be done to prevent the situation from worsening. In drawing from these various sources, …

Terrorist Victim Or Perpetrator?: Foreign Solutions To Challenges Posed By The U.S.’S Terrorist Bars To Asylum, Stephanie Blum, Nadav Morag

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

This article analyzes the challenges presented by the U.S.'s Terrorism-Related Inadmissibility Grounds ("TRIG") for asylum applicants and looks overseas for potential solutions. TRIG is the method by which the U.S. government bars terrorists and those who materially support terrorism from obtaining asylum and related protections. TRIG, however, is overbroad and inefficient, encompassing terrorist victims who currently pose and never posed any threat to U.S. security. Specifically, TRIG does not consider duress, or the provision of trivial support, when analyzing whether applicants should be barred from asylum because of material support of terrorism. Additionally, current law defines a terrorist organization for …

Law In The Time Of Covid-19, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Books

The COVID-19 crisis has ended and upended lives around the globe. In addition to killing over 160,000 people, more than 35,000 in the United States alone, its secondary effects have been as devastating. These secondary effects pose fundamental challenges to the rules that govern our social, political, and economic lives. These rules are the domain of lawyers. Law in the Time of COVID-19 is the product of a joint effort by members of the faculty of Columbia Law School and several law professors from other schools.

This volume offers guidance for thinking about some the most pressing legal issues the …

Asylum Update: Ninth Circuit Deals Two Defeats To The Trump Administration, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Trauma Of Trump's Family Separation And Child Detention Actions: A Children's Rights Perspective, Jonathan Todres, Daniela Villamizar Fink

Washington Law Review

In April 2018, the Trump Administration publicly announced a new zero-tolerance policy for illegal entries at the U.S. border. This action kicked off a wave of family separations that made headlines and drew criticism from around the globe. Despite resounding condemnation of these actions, the Trump Administration defended its family separation policy as a “tough deterrent.” At least 2,600 families were torn apart in the ensuing months. And subsequent reports—from both the government and others—have detailed widespread abuses of and substandard conditions for children held in detention centers. The consequences of these separations and the maltreatment of children in detention …

Sexual Violence And Future Harm: Lessons From Asylum Law, Shawn E. Fields

Utah Law Review

Sexual violence victims face unique and enduring safety risks following an assault. The legal system’s gradual shift from solely punishing offenders for past acts to protecting survivors from future harm reflects a recognition of this fact. But so-called “sexual assault protection order” statutes impose onerous “future harm” requirements – including proof by clear and convincing evidence that another sexual assault is imminent – that belies the realities of ongoing injury for victims and creates barriers to protection similar to the criminal justice approach to rape.

This Article suggests a different approach, one justified by a novel analogy to the refugee …

Servant Leadership And Presidential Immigration Politics: Inspiration From The Foot-Washing Ritual, Victor C. Romero

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda has been criticized by pundits and scholars alike and has been thwarted by courts concerned about executive overreach. This Article contributes to this chorus of critics by viewing the current immigration regime from a Christian perspective on servant leadership, contrary to the stereotype that Christianity necessarily aligns with any one particular political brand. Jesus Christ’s entreaty that his disciples wash each other’s feet provides a useful lens through which to evaluate whether this Administration’s work effectively advances communitarianism, a value consistent with Christian immigration ethics. An examination of a range of immigration policies—from the Muslim …

Asylum Under Attack: Is It Time For A Constitutional Right?, Stephen Meili

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fifty States, But No Room For The Stateless, In Atlas Of The Stateless: Facts And Figures About Exclusion And Displacement (Ulrike Lauerhass Et Al. Eds, 2020), David C. Baluarte

Books and Chapters

“Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...” says a plaque on the Statue of Liberty in New York. Since its founding, the United States has welcomed immigrants and has granted them citizenship. Their children born on American soil automatically become US nationals. The current US administration is trying to overturn this proud tradition.

Protecting Stateless Refugees In The United States, David Baluarte

Scholarly Articles

This article proposes a more complete and nuanced consideration of statelessness in asylum adjudication procedures in the United States and the possibility of reopening previously denied asylum claims for this purpose. The article proceeds in four parts, beginning with a discussion of statelessness in the United States. Next, the article describes the international protection frameworks for both refugees and stateless persons and identifies important points of intersection between these frameworks. Then the article argues that discriminatory denationalization that renders a person stateless triggers refugee protection, thereby making victims of such deprivation eligible for asylum in the United States. The article …

Family In The Balance: Barton V. Barr And The Systematic Violation Of The Right To Family Life In U.S. Immigration Enforcement, David Baluarte

Scholarly Articles

The United States systematically violates the international human right to family life in its system of removal of noncitizens. Cancellation of removal provides a means for noncitizens to challenge their removal based on family ties in the United States, but Congress has placed draconian limits on the discretion of immigration courts to cancel removal where noncitizens have committed certain crimes. The recently issued U.S. Supreme Court decision in Barton v. Barr illustrates the troubling trend of affording less discretion for immigration courts to balance family life in removal decisions that involve underlying criminal conduct. At issue was the “stop-time rule” …

Ideological Exclusion Of Foreigners In Israel And In The United States, Yuval Livnal

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

This article explores the challenge which free speech poses to Israeli immigration policy. It does so, first, by looking into the American immigration policy regarding ideological exclusions, i.e. refusing entry of a foreigner to the U.S., or the deportation of one from it, solely due to the foreigner's ideological belief As discussed in this article, the U.S. Supreme Court has been consistently reluctant to strike down laws and regulations barring entry of foreigners due to their ideological convictions, from the beginning of the previous century, throughout the Cold-War era, and up until the recent upholding of President Trump's travel ban. …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Constitutionally Unaccountable: Privatized Immigration Detention, Danielle C. Jefferis

Indiana Law Journal

For-profit, civil immigration detention is one of this nation’s fastest growing industries. About two-thirds of the more than 50,000 people in the civil custody of federal immigration authorities find themselves at one point or another in a private, corporate-run prison that contracts with the federal government. Conditions of confinement in many of these facilities are dismal. Detainees have suffered from untreated medical conditions and endured months, in some cases years, of detention in environments that are unsafe and, at times, violent. Some have died. Yet, the spaces are largely unregulated. This Article exposes and examines the absence of a constitutional …

Third Country Deportation, Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes

Faculty Scholarship

The large-scale deportation of noncitizens from the United States is not new. However, the speed, and secrecy, by which many of these deportations are carried out is unprecedented. Deportations are, increasingly, executed not through a legal court process, but rather, extrajudicially—in detention centers and at border crossings, outside the purview of judges or neutral adjudicators. One kind of this “shadow deportation” is what I term “third country deportation”—the removal of noncitizens to a country other than that designated by an Immigration Judge, after relief to the designated country has been granted, and after the court proceeding has concluded.

This article …

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Reform 'Em: Expanding Oversight Of Privately-Operated Immigrant Detention Centers, Katherine Rollins

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Regulating The Border, Eunice Lee

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor (Unless They Are From “One Of Three Mexican Countries”): Unaccompanied Children And The Humanitarian Crisis At The U.S. Southern Border, Samantha R. Bentley

University of Richmond Law Review

This Comment argues that the United States’s response to the humanitarian crisis at its border is wholly inadequate. It argues that the government chose to advance two policies, Zero Tolerance and Family Separation, that exacerbated the humanitarian crisis at the border. These policies facilitated practices that violated domestic and international law. Most importantly, this Comment argues that the United States government traumatized one of the most vulnerable groups of people in the world: children.

From Cancellation To Removal: The Protection Of Migrants Of 'Bad Character' In Australia, Lillian Robb

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Covid-19 And Prisoners’ Rights, Gregory Bernstein, Stephanie Guzman, Maggie Hadley, Rosalyn M. Huff, Alison Hung, Anita N.H. Yandle, Alexis Hoag, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

As COVID-19 continues to spread rapidly across the country, the crowded and unsanitary conditions in prisons, jails, juvenile detention, and immigration detention centers leave incarcerated individuals especially vulnerable. This chapter will discuss potential avenues for detained persons and their lawyers seeking to use the legal system to obtain relief, including potential release, during this extraordinary, unprecedented crisis.

In Memory Of Professor James E. Bond, Janet Ainsworth

Seattle University Law Review

Janet Ainsworth, Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law: In Memory of Professor James E. Bond.

Migration Through The Mirror: Mexican Women’S Perspectives Of What It Means For Them When Mexicans Move North: A Binational Conversation (Book), Roberto Rosas

Faculty Articles

The content of the themes discussed during the binational conversation, “Mexican Women, their empowerment and contribution to the United States,” led to the publication of this book by the members of the Center for Mexicans in Globalization and St. Mary’s University School of Law. The binational conversation is an important exercise regarding the analysis of the theme of migration.  The goal is to highlight the fundamental role of each woman who participated, whose involvement regarding the diverse themes and the sharing of personal experiences contributes to the enrichment of the subject.