Professor Lauris Wren, Attorney-in-Charge
Maximum Enrollment: 8 Students
In the last six months, asylum seekers have been fiercely attacked, arrested, detained, and often denied their due process rights. Students in the Asylum Clinic are fighting back against these attacks.
In the upcoming semesters, students will be both fighting – often in Federal District Court through petitions for writs of mandamus or habeas corpus – to preserve our clients right to a hearing or possibly to get them out of detention – and representing our clients on their asylum applications either in front of the Immigration Court or the USCIS Asylum Office. Students may also represent clients on appeals from asylum hearings to the Board of Immigration Appeals or the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
To represent our clients in their asylum cases, students seek to prove that our clients have been persecuted or have a good reason to fear being persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, opinion, or membership in a particular social group. Students draft all affidavits, do all fact investigations, and country conditions research, as well as fully representing their clients at trial. Our clients’ lives often depend on the outcome of their asylum case.