Photo of Trevin Anderson-Soria (on left) and Thomas Sullivan (right).
Over 50 million refugees and asylum seekers have left their countries to seek a haven elsewhere, creating a humanitarian crisis. Santa Clara Law students respond to this need through their work for two of the law school’s experiential programs–the Immigration Appellate Practice Clinic and the Center for Global Law & Policy’s externship program– and for refugee organizations around the world. This article highlights the experiences of three representative law students–3L Trevin Anderson-Soria, 2L Thomas Sullivan, and 4Ls Erica Hagelberg and Wafa Khan–who have worked on behalf of refugees and asylum seekers in the far-flung locations of Sydney, Australia, Lesvos, Greece, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Trevin Anderson-Soria worked during the summer of 2023 for Refugee Advice and Casework Services (RACS) in Sydney, Australia, through the law school’s Center for Global Law and Policy. RACS provides direct legal services to refugees and asylum seekers, as well as providing information and advocating for humane asylum policies in Australia. At RACS, Anderson-Soria worked with solicitors, administrators, and volunteers, including Australian law students. He reflected on the experience of accompanying a refugee client who was experiencing mental health problems to an Australian Government office, where he successfully demonstrated her eligibility for the medical benefits she needed for treatment.
RACS also gave Anderson-Soria the opportunity to see the impact of advocacy towards systemic change when he was assigned to help draft the organization’s submission to the Australian Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights. Anderson-Soria researched Australia’s offshore processing of migrants, including Australia’s policy of sending asylum seekers to offshore processing in the island nation of Nauru, and argued that a federally legislated Human Rights Act would help ensure the human rights of refugees. He was surprised and gratified, in reading the Joint Commission’s May 2024 report, to see a citation to the section of the RACS submission that he had authored.
Anderson-Soria described his impressions of RACS. “RACS serves as a reminder that wherever injustice exists in the world, it is overshadowed tenfold by the endeavors of those advocating for a better way, a kinder way. It’s been said that when we save one life, we save the world–the Refugee Advice and Casework Service has saved the world many times over.”
Photo of Thomas Sullivan and Ruth from the Lesvos Refugee Camp
Half a world away, Thomas Sullivan worked during the summer of 2024 for European Lawyers in Lesvos, in the city of Mytilene, on the island of Lesvos in Greece. Sullivan’s placement at ELIL was also made possible by the Law School’s Center for Global Law and Policy. At ELIL, Sullivan supported the lawyers providing free legal representation to asylum seekers and refugees in Greece, focusing on representation in first and second asylum interviews and in family reunification. The ELIL team is experienced, dedicated, and truly international, so Sullivan had the unique opportunity to work with three Greek lawyers, an Australian volunteer lawyer, a French law graduate, two Kurdish interpreters, and a Somali interpreter.
Sullivan’s work often took him into the Mytilene Refugee Camp. He describes the hundreds of shipping containers that serve as offices and as refugee housing in the camp, and the large area the camp occupied and by the barbed wire surrounding it. In contrast to this stark backdrop, Sullivan was touched by the work of camp volunteers running a women’s center, a recreation center for children, and a library. He was also profoundly affected by the client’s histories—stories of physical and mental abuse, deaths of loved ones, and the dangerous and traumatic voyages that brought the asylum seekers to the refugee camp. Sullivan was struck by the youth of many asylum seekers (many younger than himself) and the chaos that surrounded their lives—they might have left their homes with very little notice, and they sometimes had no idea when they began their journey that they would be going to Greece.
When we asked about major impressions from his work with ELIL, Sullivan reflected that his experiences in Mytilene showed him that the problems asylum seekers experienced and face are on a “whole different universe.” At the same time, Sullivan was frequently reminded of our shared humanity, for example, when he saw children playing just as they might in his own neighborhood, or when he witnessed a refugee father and son playing the same game his own father had taught him. Moreover, Sullivan was impressed by the professionalism and empathy of the ELIL team.
Back in the Bay Area, law students Erica Hagelberg and Wafa Khan J.D. ’24, were assigned the case of a Salvadoran client seeking review of her removal order before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit appointed the Santa Clara Law Immigration Appellate Practice Clinic to represent the client who, in contrast to the asylum seekers served by Anderson-Soria at RACS and Sullivan at ELIL, was at the end of her application journey, with her case pending before what was likely the last resort of appeal.
Hagelberg and Khan looked at the case carefully and followed their intuition to uncover areas of the case that prior counsel had left unexplored or had deemed unimportant. Through their persistence, compassion, and patience, Hagelberg and Khan were able to build trust with the client. Through many client meetings over the course of three months, Hagelberg and Khan were able to obtain the evidence needed to establish a complete account of the client’s experience and file a motion to reopen the client’s case with the Board of Immigration Appeals, where the motion is now pending.
For Hagelberg, “this case underscored the criticality of legal ethics and professional responsibility to the client. It took many, many conversations to unwind a false belief that the client’s full-truth and ideas about their case were unimportant. I have so much hope for this client’s case going forward because we were able to finally tell her complete story. And I will never forget the importance of clients being active participants in their cases—a message that Professor Abriel instilled in us from day one of the clinic.”
The work of Trevin Anderson-Soria, Thomas Sullivan, Erica Hagelberg, and Wafa Khan exemplifies the extensive benefit our students provide to individuals and the community. Their efforts reflect the Jesuit principle of cura personalis (care for the whole person), and the Law School is immensely proud of them.
For more information about RACS, visit https://www.racs.org.au/.
For more information on ELIL, visit https://www.europeanlawyersinlesvos.eu/.
For more information about Santa Clara Law’s immigration clinics, visit https://law.scu.edu/kgaclc/ and https://law.scu.edu/socialjustice/immigration-appellate-practice-clinic.
For more information on the Law School’s Center for Global Law and Policy and opportunities to participate in international externships, visit https://law.scu.edu/international/.