When reports began in fall 2017 that President Donald Trump was considering ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that had begun under President Barack Obama, Associate Clinical Professor Violeta Chapin faced some tough choices regarding the structure of the Criminal/Immigration Defense Clinic at Colorado Law that semester.
I knew that in previous years, students in the clinic often worked on the criminal cases of noncitizens and followed up with the immigration-related consequences stemming from those cases. Now, foreseeing the imminent need for immigration assistance in light of the news on DACA, Professor Chapin let us know that she sought to pivot the clinic鈥檚 focus more toward the immigration side.
The DACA program granted a two-year deferral of deportation, a Social Security number, and permission to work to certain undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.鈥攑rimarily those who were brought to this country as children. It conferred no immigration status and no path to citizenship; rather, it allowed for temporary relief from deportation and, most crucially, allowed recipients, commonly referred to as 鈥淒reamers,鈥� to work legally in the U.S.
Within two weeks of the first day of the clinic, the announcement came from the White House: President Trump had directed the Department of Homeland Security to rescind DACA. We discussed as a clinic how to proceed, but the writing was on the wall: we needed to do everything we could to help this population of young immigrants.
After the president鈥檚 announcement, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that DACA recipients whose status expired before March 5, 2018, were eligible to renew their status, but that all renewal applications had to be received by USCIS by Oct. 5, 2017. Of the 17,000 DACA recipients in Colorado, a few thousand were eligible to renew their status based on the fact that they qualified under that criterion. However, the deadline was weeks away, and the renewal fee was $495, a cost-prohibitive price for most of these students. Serious barriers stood in the way of renewal for many DACA recipients in Colorado who were otherwise eligible.
Professor Chapin ultimately made what, to many of us, was not so much a choice but rather a decision to do what we knew was right: We would devote the entire semester to (1) renewing as many DACA applications as we could, (2) screening those applicants for alternative forms of immigration relief, (3) hosting immigration screenings and citizenship drives to provide information on, and applications for, citizenship and other immigration benefits (with a focus on CU staff), and finally, (4) pursuing immigration bond hearings toward the end of the semester.
Our clinic conducted two renewal clinics at CU Boulder, helping undocumented students enrolled at CU Boulder, CU Denver, Metropolitan State University, and Front Range Community College鈥檚 Boulder County campus in Longmont. We then went on the road and held two DACA renewal drives in October, one at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, and the other at Northern Colorado University in Greeley. During the daylong drives, we helped students renew their DACA applications and, thanks to generous donors, were able to cover the renewal fee for each applicant. We also screened DACA recipients for alternative forms of immigration relief, taking on and coordinating cases in which applicants may have had a pending criminal charge or where their conditions of entry may have been such that they could later qualify for alternative forms of immigration relief. We continued working on these cases after screening the DACA applicants, and found that many of them involved an in-depth dive into both criminal and immigration law.
My classmates in the clinic went above and beyond. We planned and executed weekend citizenship and DACA drives, drove all around the Front Range putting up fliers advertising our services, and met with local immigration groups and the Boulder County Probation and Sheriff鈥檚 offices to better understand and work with them on changing the policies and procedures surrounding law enforcement鈥檚 practices of sharing immigration information with federal authorities.
To close out the clinic, Professor Chapin contacted the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network and had us work on bond cases for detained noncitizens. Some of us worked on those bond cases well into finals, but that did not matter; we were more than happy to do so.
Despite being overwhelmed with requests for assistance throughout the university and beyond, Professor Chapin ran the clinic in the most efficient, professional, and inspiring manner. We became the de facto immigration law resource for CU students and staff. Instead of declining requests, Professor Chapin simply added more DACA clinics and citizenship drives to be able to support CU students and staff. Indeed, in numerous instances we discovered staff members at the university who were eligible to adjust their immigration status but did not know that they were eligible before meeting with us. Professor Chapin was loath to turn away someone who needed help; the clinical students stepped up to the plate, and we learned a tremendous amount in the process.
The strength, resiliency, maturity, and perseverance of the DACA recipients we worked with at CU Boulder, CSU, and UNC left a lasting impression. Despite the political gamesmanship and crippling uncertainty following the president鈥檚 announcement last fall, they get up every day and go to class, go to work, and take care of their families. Renewing their statuses and helping them with other forms of immigration relief were not overly complex tasks, but they were things that would not have been done but for our pro bono clinic, to say nothing of the $495 renewal fee. Individual and group donors expressed overwhelming generosity in their donations to the clinic to cover these fees, and for that all of us are incredibly grateful.
On the last day of our first renewal clinic in Fort Collins, at a dinner hosted by CSU professors, we went around the room and talked about what this work meant to us. Several students in the clinic told the group that this was the most meaningful thing they had done thus far in law school. This was not a surprise to me; despite the fact that we were constantly thanked by the DACA recipients and their families, often it was we, the clinical students, who would respond with, 鈥淣o, thank you.鈥� We responded this way because we considered it an honor to be able to do this essential work with them鈥攚ork that could perhaps keep families together, and keep work authorizations current, for a few more months. In the immigration realm, it is sometimes the small, individual victories that matter the most.
Pictured: Professor Violeta Chapin speaks during a DACA rally in Longmont (Matthew Jonas / Daily Camera)