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Law Students Help Score Win for Immigrants in
Supreme Court
Lawyer Jayashri Srikantiah’s students at Stanford Law’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 U.S.
Rene P. Ciria-Cruz, New America Media
Posted: Dec 18, 2006
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.
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Rene Ciria-Cruz is an editor at New America Media. |
