The COVID-19 virus and the resulting shelter-in-place orders may have limited our physical mobility, but the needs of Santa Clara Law’s clinic clients have not stopped, and neither have the clinical students. Throughout Santa Clara Law’s clinics, students continue to support their clients and to work on their behalf, going the extra mile for their clients during these difficult times. Here is a brief description of our continuing work.

The intrepid Immigration Appellate Practice students used their minds and their pens (well, computers, really) to carry on their work for their clients. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit appointed Santa Clara Law as counsel for four individuals seeking judicial review of administrative orders denying their claims for asylum. The facts of the clients’ cases were vastly different, and they came from many parts of the globe – Ukraine, Honduras, Guinea, and Ethiopia. But all shared a common need for safety and for effective legal representation. The students provided that representation by filing an extensive brief in each client’s case, and they will present oral argument before the Ninth Circuit in October 2020. Each brief represented hundreds of hours of work by the students.

It gave us particular comfort that all four of our clients have recently been released from immigration custody. At least they do not have the additional anxiety of facing COVID-19 in crowded detention facilities.

Santa Clara Law’s Immigration Appellate Practice Clinic has successfully completed a case that has been ongoing since 2019!

Four years ago, alongside Santa Clara Law students, Professor Evangeline Abriel worked with the U.S. Court of Appeals to grant their client relief from removal, based on his showing of probable persecution if he returned to his home country of Togo. Their case prevailed at the Ninth Circuit in 2019, where our clinic members wrote a brief to the Board of Immigration Appeals. Our students then acquired new evidence, and after presenting it to the Immigration Judge, recently obtained a ruling in their client’s favor.

While many law students have worked on this case over the past four years and others have served as interpreters and translators, Vicente Lovelace 3L is the current student who has worked hard to secure the ruling for this case. “The winning formula in effective advocacy is to read the record and know the law,” Lovelace notes. “Due to IAPC’s preparation, a years-long legal saga ended in less than 15 minutes.”

When asked what he did after the hearing, Abriel and Lovelace’s client responded that he had found a mosque, and had gone to it to give thanks. “I’m not religious, Lovelace says, “but I believe that there’s more to learn from his actions than my own.”

The Immigration Appellate Practice Clinic gives our students the opportunity to represent real clients under the supervision of our professors. Students consult with the client, review the administrative record, research the case, write the appellate briefs, and present oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals.