Working in Community: A conversation with the Immigrants' Rights Clinic at Stanford Law School

"We have to take our marching orders from the communities and the organizations that have been working on this and center their voices."

The Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Stanford Law School creates a space where aspiring law-practitioners can connect with and serve immigrant communities. Students take on the responsibility of defending clients against deportation in the San Francisco area. Their partnerships with local and national immigrants’ rights organizations allow students to engage in “cutting-edge litigation and advocacy” for the most vulnerable.

Jayashri Srikantiah, Director, and Lisa Weissman-Ward, Associate Director of the clinic, join us this week to discuss the barriers undocumented individuals face in seeking and acquiring legal aid, and how organizations, like the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, can work in community to dispel some of these.

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Laura Villalobos: Could you please give us some insight into what the Immigrant Rights Clinic is?

Jayashri Srikantiah: The clinic allows law students to learn how to practice law while assisting individuals who are facing deportation from this country. Students in their second or third year of law school work on cases representing people before the immigration judge in San Francisco Immigration Court or on appeal. These cases can range from asylum cases or other persecution-based cases, to those involving people with past convictions, to clients who are undocumented, who have long presence in this country and others. We have a broad and varied docket. And we also do advocacy work in partnership with immigrant rights organizations across the country on various issues including immigration detention and access to justice.

LV: That's some amazing work. What inspired the founding of the Immigrant Rights Clinic?

JS: Well, the clinic started in 2004 when I came to Stanford. The goal really was to expand the clinical offerings at the law school at the time. The clinic before then had been the East Palo Alto Community Law Project, and they have long done immigration work. But in 2004, there was a real expansion in the clinical offerings at the law school across the board, including in immigration. So I was very fortunate to be selected to start the clinic at that time.

LV: Can you speak to any specific challenges that undocumented immigrants face when seeking legal services? And how does the Immigrant Rights Clinic work to address these challenges?

Lisa Weissman-Ward: There's some really significant barriers to justice in the United States as it relates to the immigration system. One of the biggest is access to council and legal services. There are some amazing nonprofits, CBOs, private firms in the Bay Area. However, many are at capacity just because of the overwhelming need and the work that needs to be done to support an undocumented individual or someone looking to regularize their immigration status; the law is quite complicated. In order to have lawyers that are competent and able to do the work, it requires resources, and the resources are fewer and fewer if we're talking about resources that offer sliding scale or pro bono free legal services. And so one of the big barriers is just access.

In the broader community, there's been a deep-seated fear in reaching out. That fear is because of various administrations that have focused on deporting certain demographics. A lot of folks have wanted to intentionally stay under the radar for valid reasons.

LV: Speaking of this hesitation that undocumented clients might have in seeking legal help, how does the IRC build trust with its undocumented immigrant clients?

LW-W: Jayashri developed our clinical model so that we’ve been committed to working within and alongside community. So a lot of times, I think there's an instinct that lawyers come in and work for community or that they're just taking the lead. But one of the things that we've really tried to do is understand that in order to meaningfully engage, we need to build trust, and that takes time. So part of that is really connecting with our nonprofit and community organizing, grassroots organizing folks in community so that we have trusted relationships with maybe organizations that someone from the community might go to first.

And so if they say, "Oh yes, we know Stanford and they have this reputation for doing good work and they're trustworthy," that helps with that bias. So I think us making sure that we are centering ourselves and our work around what is needed in community is one of the ways that we build trust.

LV: Trust is very important particularly because of the political climate surrounding immigration. What are some of the other challenges and concerns that you are seeing right now with undocumented communities?

JS: Big picture, the challenge is that Congress is very unlikely to enact meaningful comprehensive immigration reform. This means there isn't going to be the kind of legal protection that we all think is the ultimate right result, which is that there's a pathway to legal status for people who are here and who are undocumented. In the absence of congressional action, we're left with fewer options. There may be opportunities with the Biden administration to advocate for different kinds of protections in the margins, but I think the big challenge is a political one.

The other thing is that during the Trump years, there was a real focus on protecting immigrant communities, particularly in California. Legislators were really focused on protecting immigrant communities from the onslaught of the Trump administration.

And yet it's really important to keep in mind that even when you don't have the Trump administration, undocumented communities and immigrant communities still don't have the kind of legal status that they should. And so because of that, there's still an ongoing need for creative solutions. As just one example: what about work authorization for people who aren't eligible for DACA, who aren't eligible for other forms of relief? Are there creative options for work authorization? What other protections can the state offer? A lot of the workplace protections that have recently been enhanced are really important, but I think more can be done to make sure that the workplace is a safe and inclusive, equitable place for undocumented people. I think the big picture is this failure at the federal legislative level.

LV: Given this lack of legislative action being taken, what can organizations and individuals do to improve or advocate for these communities?

JS: What Lisa said is the most important thing: we have to take our marching orders from the communities and the organizations that have been working on this and center their voices. And there are really wonderful advocates and organizations who've been working on this for quite a while. United We Dream is one, but there are others as well. In terms of what we as a clinic can do, our focus is listening to what we're told we can do and where we can be of assistance.

One place we've been invited to help is screening people who are undocumented who don't have any other pathway to relief, that there's no creative legal solution to their immigration status. Having resources for those kinds of intakes, I think, is one piece of a much bigger puzzle. I'll turn it over to Lisa to talk a little bit about what we do.

LW-W: So while we are running a full-time clinic, the reality is we are part of the Stanford community. And so there's been ongoing and iterative conversations about how we at the Immigrant Rights Clinic can support our undocumented and documented community members, at least from the perspective of undergrads and grad students. Something that we've been doing now for a number of years is offering free and confidential consultations to any Stanford student that is either undocumented or has DACA. It's free, confidential, entirely private, and is an analysis, an intake of a person's immigration history.

It's an opportunity for that individual to ask questions because a lot of times knowledge is power. Just having access to information can be really, really useful. In those consultations we can provide referrals to other nonprofits in the area or to offer in the context of DACA renewals to a firm in San Francisco. To echo Jayashri's point, this is one way that it is really important to just actively participate in providing access to information and resources for our Stanford community.

LV: How has the university been mobilizing in supporting its students?

LW-W: We are thought partners and engage to provide legal information that can be synthesized and provided by an immigration attorney. When there was a Supreme Court decision on DACA, there was a whole webinar that I did breaking down the decision and talking about what might happen from this decision and providing information about how folks might want to be thinking about options. And we've done that not just in the context of DACA, but we did that in the context of the Muslim travel ban in early 2017. We've had other forums to work through up and coming legal developments.

We want to be able to provide support frequently as we're able to. Some of that might be providing guidance or insights on thinking about how might we be able to contribute to a working group? How might we come up with streamlined and efficient plans? And then how do you get out the word that these opportunities for engaging and for consultation and for information are out there while still creating a safe space, and making sure that we're maintaining folks' privacy and confidentiality and really being mindful of those other issues.

LV: Is there any particular insights or messages that you would like to share with La Cuenta’s readers?

JS: Well, it's an honor to be working with our students as part of the Stanford community. It's such a privilege to work with talented, smart law students in partnership with community groups and with our clients to move forward towards a shared goal. And that's something that I think is a professional joy. So I'll end with that.

Propina

Organizations like the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic serve a powerful role supporting and mobilizing individuals and communities. There are many organizations doing similar work. We invite our readers to look at ways they can support the movement to advocate for immigrants’ rights in community with us. Below are a few other organizations you might be interested in:

• Immigrants Rising

• United We Dream

• Define American

Are there other organizations, individuals, or groups that you think should be added here (or that you’d like to see represented in future spaces in La Cuenta)?

See you next week!