Chasing Liberty: Family Detention Symposium

Topics:
  • Family
  • Detention
  • Political asylum

On Friday February 3, 2017, UDC’s David A. Clarke School of Law will host a day-long conference on the detention of Central American Families in the United States. The conference will bring together advocates, law students, and academics throughout the nation who have been fighting to end the detention of immigrant families. In June 2014, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reinstituted an abandoned policy of detaining children and their parents seeking asylum in the United States. Families were first held in Artesia, New Mexico, which was accurately described as a “deportation mill,” and now in Dilley and Karnes City, Texas, along with a smaller detention center in Berks County, Pennsylvania. Thousands of children and their mothers have now been held in confinement while their cases are processed, with a small portion of the families held for more than a year. The conference will examine the history of family detention, along with the various advocacy strategies, litigation-based and otherwise, advanced to end this practice. We will also hear from law student volunteers from UDC and Lewis & Clark who have engaged with detained families during or after their release from detention. Scholars will also examine the international human rights ramifications of detaining families and of asylum free zones in the United States. Finally, as we hope that the new administration will put an end to the detention of children and their mothers, we will pivot to examine the post-release crisis. How do we ensure adequate representation for asylum-seeking families released from detention? How do we win claims for protection in difficult jurisdictions? We will also examine the lessons learned from the massive national movement built to advocate for detained families and try to replicate our successes in representation in detained and non-detained settings nationwide. We will start the day with opening remarks from Professor emerita, Barbara Hines, followed by a panel tracing the history of family detention and painting a picture of the current detention system. This will be followed by a panel examining the legal and advocacy challenges to the practice of detaining mothers and children, from the Flores case to hunger strikes by the mothers themselves. During lunch, students who have volunteered inside the detention centers will share their perspectives. After lunch, we will examine international human rights law and policy as it pertains to the detention of children and mothers. We will then dive into the post-release crisis – how to ensure competent legal representation and winning results for families released from detention and seeking asylum. Finally, we will consider how to harness the power of law students and remote work and apply lessons learned from the family detention context to immigration representation and immigration detention centers nationwide.

Registration:
Please register for the conference here. Questions should be directed to Assistant Professor of Law, Lindsay M. Harris at Lindsay.harris@udc.edu. Online registration is available until 2/3/2017.

IAN Partners

  • pro bono net
  • american immigration lawyers association
  • national immigration law center
  • unidos us
  • immigration legal resource center
  • immigration legal resource center
  • american immigration council
  • american civil liberties union
  • american immigration council
  • national immigration project
  • the advocates for human rights
  • lutheran immigration and refugee service

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