Since President’s Trump’s inauguration there has been a 40 percent uptick in immigration arrests and the administration had called for a $1.5 billion increase in the budget for detention centers. In this climate, law and policy have intersected to create large systemic injustices. The limits of individualized lawyering are clear. There is an urgent need to support organized constituent groups that aim to generate collective power to achieve meaningful change in our immigration laws and equity for our diverse communities. The Trump administration’s promise to be tough on immigration have created a hostile environment for immigrants with devastating effects on our communities.
As lawyers, we are constantly re-defining community lawyering, our relationship to constituent groups and organizing efforts, and strategies for supporting organized constituencies without co-opting organizational goals. Representing and/or collaborating with organizations in the clinical setting affords students the opportunity to think critically about how lawyers can support organizations to meet their long-term objectives and the challenges of integrating the principles of community lawyering into practice.
This session will draw on the experiences of clinicians teaching students engaged in the representation of or collaboration with organizations building power among immigrant communities to achieve equity through organizing, policy work, and legal strategy.
Goals of the session:
- Expanding clinical mission: Think expansively about ways in which students and clinical programs can be more responsive to community organizations while still fulfill obligations to existing communities and clients
- Broaden student development: Strategize how to meaningfully assist students in their development as social justice lawyers who work in collaboration with and in support of community based efforts
- Limits of the law: Explore how the legal framework in which immigration lawyers traditionally practice (from our prior experience in practice) is patently unjust and cannot meet the goals of community organizing and resistance.