As COVID-19 continues to spread, more and more people are feeling the impacts of this pandemic. Detainees face particularly grave health risks and HIRC is working tirelessly to advocate for the release of all immigrants in detention. Recently, HIRC attorneys and students submitted a number of habeas petitions on behalf of clients who are currently…
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HIRC clinical students Eun Sung Yang ’20 and Michael Hur ’20 are featured in this piece about HLS clinics.
Recently, the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program (HIRC) joined the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute and Prisoners Legal Services of Massachusetts in submitting a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and local county sheriffs/wardens of the jails that contract with ICE, urging them to release immigrants in ICE custody in light of the ongoing…
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Though Massachusetts is far from the Southern border, many immigrants are still detained across the state. Until recently, one of those detainees was John*, a man who was tortured in his home country in East Africa. John ended up in detention because certain criminal convictions triggered the deportation process and eventually led his case to…
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As the status of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to shift, many people across the United States are experiencing drastic changes in their day-to-day life. For the Harvard Law School community this has meant that all students are no longer on campus for the remainder of the semester and HLS staff has transitioned to remote work…
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This year on Valentine’s Day, students and staff from the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program (HIRC) and the HLS Immigration Project sent dozens of Valentine’s Day cards and letters of support to children in detention as part of the “Love Letters to Kids” campaign, which is run by TODEC in Perris, CA. This project,…
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On December 31, 2019, the Crimmigration Clinic celebrated a victory on behalf of a client who had been detained for more than a year. Based on arguments submitted by the Clinic, the Board of Immigration Appeals (the Board) terminated removal proceedings against the client and released him from detention. “In spite of the injustices our…
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“How can I help?” Here at HIRC we hear this often, from alumni, community members, colleagues, and everyone in between. As immigrants continue to face legal challenges and human rights abuses at the border and across the country, more and more people across the nation are ready to take a stand to protect the rights…
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On September 23, the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program (HIRC) submitted comments on on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposal of “Designating Aliens for Expedited Removal.” In the comments, HIRC urged DHS to halt the expansion of expedited removal because of serious issues with the system, writing “…multiple reports document DHS officers’ failure…
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“The investigation profiles immigrants held in solitary and a whistleblower at DHS. The journalists analyzed and synthesized thousands of pages of records obtained on immigrants detained in solitary by ICE. The results of one of the clinic FOIAs are also cited).”