Immigration Law and Policy Clinic 2022 Highlights

ILPC students (l-r) Marlene Pierce and Sydney Johnson outside of the Aurora ICE Detention Center while conducting legal visits.

The Immigration Law and Policy Clinic (ILPC) at the Sturm College of Law is celebrating its fifth birthday this year. Visiting Assistant Professor Elizabeth (Liz) Jordan began directing the clinic this semester after an extensive career zealously advocating for detained immigrants and a prior stint as an adjunct professor at DU in the Spring of 2022. The clinic has eight students enrolled for the year and continues the ILPC tradition of representing people from communities of color who face harsh immigration consequences due to prior contact with the criminal legal system, including detention while their cases are pending. We currently have seven clients detained at the private prison run by the GEO Group in Aurora, Colorado.

We are engaged in a variety of activities to advocate for these clients, including requests for release with ICE, bond hearings with the immigration court, advocacy for proper medical and mental health care, and appeals to the Board of Immigration Appeals—including one for a previous clinic client whose prior appeal the ILPC won. Our students conduct in-person visits with their clients to interview and counsel them, engage in collaboration with other attorneys and experts in the field, investigate facts, and conduct extensive legal research to argue vigorously for our clients’ release from detention and/or relief from deportation.

In addition, the ILPC strongly believes in being responsive to emerging needs in Colorado’s immigrant communities. To that end, a team of students is preparing to attend a community workshop designed to support new community members who were evacuated from Afghanistan and who need assistance with the (often confusing) asylum application.

ILPC Faculty Highlights

Visiting Assistant Professor Elizabeth Jordan

Publications

• Ending the Discriminatory Pretrial Incarceration of People with Disabilities: Liability under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act, Harvard Law & Policy Review (forthcoming 2022) (with Margo Schlanger and Roxana Moussavian).