Thread: Law Students Score Win for Illegals

Law Students Help Score Win for Immigrants in Supreme Court

New America Media, News Report, Rene P. Ciria-Cruz, Posted: Dec 18, 2006

Editor's Note: Lawyer Jayashri Srikantiah’s students at Stanford Law School’s Immigrant Rights Clinic learn public interest law by doing actual cases. They recently aided in a U.S. Supreme Court victory for would-be deportees from the United States. Rene Ciria-Cruz is an editor at New America Media.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Immigrants whose lives are upended by unfair rules and arbitrary law enforcers should thank the day electrical engineer Jayashri Srikantiah decided to leave Intel to become a lawyer.

The young San Franciscan is the enthusiastic director of Stanford University Law School’s Immigrant Rights Clinic, where students learn public interest law by doing actual asylum, domestic violence and deportation cases on behalf of immigrants.

Students in Srikantiah’s clinic -- more than a dozen sign up each term -- learn not only the preparation and handling of immigration cases, which may involve representing individuals as well as impact litigation, but they also learn that community outreach, education and collaboration are critical parts of defending immigrant rights.

Most recently, Srikantiah and her students had a hand in an important U.S. Supreme Court victory that can bring relief to immigrants facing unjust deportation.

On Dec. 5, the high court ruled 8-1 that immigration authorities cannot use a felony under state law that is a misdemeanor under federal law to summarily deport Jose Antonio Lopez, a permanent U.S. resident for 16 years.

Lopez, a grocery store owner in Sioux Falls, S.D., pleaded guilty to telling someone where to get cocaine. As a result, he was imprisoned for 15 months and then deported to Mexico in early 2006. Although Lopez’s crime is a felony in South Dakota, it is, as a first-time offense, a misdemeanor under the federal Controlled Substances Act.

The Supreme Court ruled that immigration authorities should not have denied him the opportunity to ask for relief from deportation. Lopez now can return to his family here, which includes his 6-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son, where an immigration judge will decide whether he can remain.

Top lawyers from the firm Covington & Burling successfully argued the case for Lopez. “They did a wonderful pro bono job representing Mr. Lopez,_ says Srikantiah.”

What Srikantiah and her law clinic did, through an amicus brief, was widen the impact of the ruling so that it may benefit the thousands of law-abiding immigrants whose otherwise blameless legal histories are marred by first-time drug convictions.

The brief explained to the court the unfairly harsh and disruptive impact a ruling against Lopez would inflict on immigrant communities.

As a result of the favorable ruling, legal immigrants with one drug-related conviction can now apply for relief from removal from the country instead of being automatically deported.

Srikantiah explains that a large coalition of advocacy groups and community organizations came together as soon as the Lopez case appeared headed for the Supreme Court. The coalition knew the case could have an effect on entire communities.

“The Immigrant Defense Project of the New York State Defenders Association led in coordinating the briefing in the case and developing the key legal issues facing the courts,” Srikantiah explains. The National Council of La Raza, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, its Asian American counterpart AALDEF and ethnic bar associations joined the brief.

The perfect storm of drugs, wayward immigrants and crime doesn’t seem to be the best condition for fighting a pro-immigrant battle. Potential supporters could have easily been confused, “thinking that people deported for drug offenses, like Mr. Lopez, were dangerous individuals,” says Srikantiah.

Immigration authorities, she notes, can reach back into an immigrant’s legal past and deport the person based on a single blot. She recalls that an Iraq war veteran married to a U.S. citizen was deported and separated from her family as a result of one drug conviction.

“But people quickly learned that the Lopez case is one of many instances of people with a drug conviction turning their lives around and becoming law-abiding, but their lives are reduced to that one single conviction and they’re deported,” Srikantiyah explains. “At least now there’s a chance for protection against that automatic punishment.”

Srikantiah warns that there are many hurdles ahead for immigrants as a result of the use of immigration law to “target, question and detain people based simply on their ethnicity.”

The fusing of immigration control and national security, she says, brings in the new factor of secrecy, making unfair regulations and practices harder to challenge. “There’s a lot the press and the public can’t know because government won’t release information based on national security grounds,” Srikantiah says.

Compounding the secrecy, she adds, is that government targets are very vulnerable, “usually they’re on unstable or temporary visas, and are more prone not to challenge the authorities.”

The UC Berkeley engineering and New York University Law School graduate isn’t someone to shy away from a court battle, especially in defense of immigrants. Her choice of public interest law as an arena was particularly inspired by Prof. Burt Neuborn’s voting rights clinic at NYU.

Her switch from engineering to law didn’t delight her parents at first. “But they’re now very happy and quite proud ever since I began working for the ACLU,” Srikantiah confides. Before joining Stanford Law faculty she was ACLU Northern California’s associate legal director.

As an ACLU attorney Srikantiah successfully challenged the government’s denial of the existence of a no-fly list that barred certain passengers from boarding airplanes. The government was forced to turn over information about the list and pay attorney’s fees, and other ACLU lawyers are now trying to stop the government’s use of the no-fly list itself.

As staff attorney for the ACLU’s National Immigrant Rights Project, Srikantiah represented the teenage victims of Berkeley entrepreneur Lakireddi Bali Reddy, who was eventually sentenced to eight years in prison for human trafficking and sexual abuse. Two Reddy sons received lesser sentences for conspiracy to defraud the INS as part of plea agreements.

Srikantiah’s immigrant rights clinic is currently challenging before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights mandatory deportation as a violation of international law. The group also has a case before the U.S. District in Los Angeles challenging the indefinite detention of immigrants and asylum-seekers.

http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=F ... wtopic&f=6

Just goes to show what condition our country is in when judges allow these kind of Anti-American cases to be even filed. First and foremost is the word "illegals". But I guess even most judges don't know the meaning of the word.

Abolish the ACLU!

The perfect storm of drugs, wayward immigrants and crime doesn’t seem to be the best condition for fighting a pro-immigrant battle. Potential supporters could have easily been confused, “thinking that people deported for drug offenses, like Mr. Lopez, were dangerous individuals,” says Srikantiah.

Ya gotta be kidding............. The insanity continues......

Immigrants whose lives are upended by unfair rules and arbitrary law enforcers should thank the day electrical engineer Jayashri Srikantiah decided to leave Intel to become a lawyer.

Glowing praise for sedition.

I have something other than praise for Jayashri Srikantiah !!! It is wrath......what an idiot!

This case would mean next to nothing if the millions of other illegal migrants had been either stopped at the border or previously deported as they should have been.
Because we as Americans have been used and abused by the government allowance of migration en masse this case and others strikes a very sore spot indeed.
Every day the flood and the abuse of America continues.
Just who is in line to be the Pres. after Pelosi is impeached?

Sovereign wrote:

Because we as Americans have been used and abused by the government allowance of migration en masse this case and others strikes a very sore spot indeed.

Yes it is adding insult to injury!

I can't help but think that many in our government are hoping citizens go back to sleep or that we will tolerate being screwed again and I don't think either is the case.
I think a great deal of anger is just below the surface and that there will be a zero tolerance for anything that can be construed as amnesty.
Of course doing nothing is a solution if your goal is to flood America with foreign nationals that will change us into a third world nation with a few very rich people surrounded by millions living in mud huts.

I can't help but think that many in our government are hoping citizens go back to sleep or that we will tolerate being screwed again and I don't think either is the case.

I agree I don't think any of us are in the mood for a nap and as far as being tolerant ...........I don't think so! I think the government better wake up because this is not a small issue, there is much suffering attached to it on many different levels and we all are getting mad as H--- and we are NOT going to take it anymore!!!!

Just build a fence and keep them out. Then deny them jobs by throwing their employers in prison.