Comments from Participants

This photo of Jay Sagar (with glasses), Clinic Director Lynn Marcus (far right), Emily Hyams, their clients, a husband of one client, and the clients' children, was taken immediately after their courtroom victory.

Participating in the Immigration Law Clinic was the most meaningful experience I had in law school.  I had a chance to work on legal skills like interviewing, developing testimony, working with experts, and oral advocacy.  Emilie Hyams [class of '06] and I represented two sisters who were charged with alien smuggling, and with Lynn [Marcus]’s guidance, we were able to understand the reasons for their actions, which helped us develop a theory of the case.  At the final hearing, it would have been impossible not to feel emotionally invested with so many family members present and unsure if they would be separated.  After we won, I felt even greater respect for the Clinic because of the important role it serves in the community in enabling law students to develop skills while defending indigent immigrants.   Jay Sagar, Class of '05

My experience with the ILC has been tremendously helpful in understanding the immigration process and the overall process a case goes through, from the interview stage to the actual hearing.  It has also made me more confident when speaing with clients, other lawyers and judges.
Margaret MacDougal, Class of '05

I learned more about lawyering in this clinic than in any other class in law school. This class also gave me a completely different perspective on the law and on law enforcement, opening my mind and reaching my heart in a way no other course had. The challenge of this clinic is time and stress, but Professor Marcus was consistently available to help me face these challenges.
Erin Simpson, Class of 2001

We put in long, long days in Florence [Note: Before the fall of 1999, students in the program traveled to a detention center in Florence for their work.]; we often prepared for them with long, long hours of study and writing at home.  This was all to our good, for we began to feel  the weight of the lawyerly skills that our professors have attempted to instill.  By associating with the Project's very skillful staff attorneys, we have been exposed to law as altruism, law as rescue, law as the embodiment of the American dream. What more can you ask of a semester?
Sharan A. Bennett,  Class of '96

As soon as I walked into a roomful of immigrants dressed in prison gear waiting to be interviewed, the time I had spent in class became immediately and urgently relevant [...] I  think I am better at law school now.  I focus more readily on a subject like evidence -- because I understand how important it is to know how to object to evidence in practice . [W]ithout the Immigration Law Clinic and the Florence Project, many detainees would receive no legal assistance at all.  Some of them are lifelong residents, in the States since they were only weeks old and facing deportation for minor legal offenses.  Others have been tortured or hunted in the political turmoil of Central America , and have a legal right to protection within this country. The Clinic serves them when no one else will.
Dave Culbertson, Class of '97

As students, we gain enormously in enhancing our skills as future attorneys. [...] Within a few weeks of the fall term, I have assisted in the cases of nationals of India, Sri Lanka, Greece, Guatemala and Laos.  In any given week, individuals from other countries may need help in coping with our immigration and refugee laws.  The attorneys are fully pressed by the sheer volume of human need as dozens of aliens go through the system each day.  We  law students learn from their models and, on our own, get a sense of the value of law to real human beings.
John Crow, Class of '96

When I decided to volunteer as an interpreter for the Clinic, I was impelled by a wish to help a permanent resident from Vietnam who was deportable based on his criminal record.  I had never imagined meeting and working with such wonderful lawyers and law students [...] I have often heard about how lawyers abuse the law.  The Immigration Clinic is living evidence about how good lawyers help restore a man's rights, give him a chance to start his life anew and without bitter memories.
Hien Ta Dang, Vietnamese immigrant
 
The reason it took me this long [to write] is that I have been thinking of a very special word that could completely satisfy the special thanks I would like to say to you, and how deeply, deep that thanks goes into my soul. Whichever way I thought and no matter whom I asked, it still came down to the same thank you, and so I am saying thank you from the depth of my soul ...
Nigerian client granted protection under the U.N. Convention Against Torture