Supporting vital immigrant defense

Penn Carey Law Transnational Legal Clinic students spent a semester with the Southern Poverty Law Center, learning immigration law while serving clients seeking asylum and other forms of immigration relief.

This spring, the University of Pennyslvania Carey Law School’s Transnational Legal Clinic traveled to Georgia to assist the Southern Poverty Law Center’s work representing immigrant detainees.

Led by Sarah Paoletti, Practice Professor of Law and director of the Transnational Legal Clinic (TLC), University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School students enrolled in the TLC recently traveled to Georgia to work with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative (SIFI). TLC students spent the semester learning immigration law while serving clients seeking asylum and other forms of immigration relief. SIFI provides legal assistance to immigrants detained at the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia as well as other immigrant detention centers across the South.

Members of Penn Carey Law’s Transnational Legal Clinic in the office of the Southern Poverty Law Center. — Members of Penn Carey Law’s Transnational Legal Clinic traveled to Georgia to assist the Southern Poverty Law Center’s work representing immigrant detainees. (Image: Courtesy of Penn Carey Law)

For some of the immigrants at Stewart, the students provided individuals their first opportunity since being detained to communicate with anyone—let alone someone providing legal assistance—in their native language.

“You will never realize how important free legal service and free language services are to a person in need until you appear before them and see their face visibly light up at hearing their language and realizing that they have someone to rely on in a completely unfamiliar land,” says Indumini Randeny, who spoke French and Sinhala with detained immigrants during the trip.

The service immersion trip also served to help students contextualize the work with their individual clients while also drawing connections with TLC’s broader human rights advocacy work.

“We have long engaged in a range of advocacy alongside partner organizations and individuals addressing the internationally-recognized human rights of individuals subjected to immigration detention in the United States, and challenging rights abuses endemic to the system of immigration enforcement and detention,” says Paoletti. “Our service immersion trips help connect that advocacy before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and different U.N. Human Rights mechanisms to the actual lived experiences of those subjected to detention.”