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S3E01: Representation Matters with Co-Dean Rose Cuison-Villazor and Vice Dean Anjum Gupta
11 Plays3 years ago
Co-Dean Kimberly Mutcherson is joined by the new interim co-dean Rose Cuison-Villazor, who founded the Rutgers Center for Immigration Law, Policy, and Justice, and is a nationally renowned scholar with an active record in social justice issues; and the new vice dean Anjum Gupta, who is the Director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic and teaches non-clinical courses in refugee law and professional responsibility.
Read more about Rutgers Law School's new leadership team.
The Power of Attorney is produced by Rutgers Law School. With two locations minutes from Philadelphia and New York City, Rutgers Law offers the prestige and reputation of a large, nationally-known university combined with a personal, small campus experience. Learn more by visiting law.rutgers.edu.
Production Manager: Margaret McCarthy
Series Producer: Nate Nakao
Editor: Nate Nakao
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Speakers
00:00:09
Speaker
I'm Kim Mutcherson and I'm the co-dean of Rutgers Law School on the Camden campus. And this is the power of attorney. So today I again get the pleasure of talking to some of my colleagues and actually two of them today, which doubles the pleasure, I suppose. So I will be talking to Anju Gupta, who is the Vice Dean at Rutgers Law School in Newark and who also directs the Immigrant Rights Clinic there.
00:00:36
Speaker
And to Rose Cuisin-Viazor, who is my co-dean at Rutgers Law in Newark, both of whom have deep, deep interest in and passion for and have done amazing work in the immigration world. And so we're going to have a lovely conversation about that and lots of other things in the next hour or so. So Rose and Andru, thank you both so much for being here today. Thanks for having us.
00:01:03
Speaker
Absolutely. Thank you.
Inspiration and Career Beginnings
00:01:05
Speaker
So I'm going to do with you two what I do to everybody on this podcast, which we're going to start out by talking about your origin story. So in other words, given all the different things that you could have chosen to do with your life, why did you decide that you wanted to become a lawyer? And Rose, let's start with you. OK, thank you. So I was a senior in high school. I remember it was career day. And then there were these
00:01:33
Speaker
Lawyers who came and one of them out of I think the five lawyers who came there was one woman And see I grew up in a small island in the middle of nowhere It's a beautiful island called Saipan. There's a capital of the Northern Mariana Islands And like I enjoyed growing up, but I I recall thinking as a senior that oh look there is a woman lawyer maybe I could be a lawyer too and that kind of
00:02:00
Speaker
put that idea in my mind. I think before that, I never even thought that it was something that I could do, but then I saw this woman and I figured, I'm gonna become a lawyer. I don't know how to do that, but I'm gonna, that's going to be my lifelong goal. And so once you decided that, so you're what, probably about 17, somewhere around there? I was about 17, I think by then. Okay, so once you decided that, what was the plan for moving forward?
00:02:29
Speaker
Well, so my mom had been living in Texas. She moved there a few years before. I didn't see my mom my entire high school life. I lived with my dad because my parents were divorced. And so I knew that I was going to move to Texas and live with my mother and go to a local university in Texas, University of Texas at Arlington.
00:02:53
Speaker
And when I was there, I figured, well, what does it mean to become a lawyer? And I talked to an advisor and she said, well, you can become a political science major. And so I did that. And then two years after spending time at UT Arlington, I figured I really want to be elsewhere. I'd like a college experience. And so I transferred to UT Austin. And so that's where I ended up finishing my degree in political science and communications.
00:03:22
Speaker
But even then, and I was involved in the pre-law society, but I wasn't ready yet to start law school. I had applied to law school, got into law school, but I wanted to defer. So I went back to Saipan and I became a high school teacher. I taught civics, US history, world history, and I was the best volleyball coach. I'm barely five feet, but I'm telling you, my team became champions that year, all because of me. I like to think, but no, it's really because they worked really hard.
00:03:53
Speaker
But I had deferred law school for only one more year. If I didn't go to law school, then I would lose a number of different things, including scholarship that I was able to get. And so then I went to law school at an American university in Washington, D.C. and loved it. It's a great school for me. My professors were
00:04:13
Speaker
committed to social justice work. I wanted to be a public interest lawyer. And then that led to me ultimately reaching my dream of becoming a lawyer. Awesome. I love that. And you're also one of those sort of rare law professors who actually had teaching experience before you became a law professor, even if it was high schoolers, right? And I'm pretty sure that the volleyball team deeply benefited.
00:04:40
Speaker
from your presence. I don't doubt that at all. Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. Okay.
Challenges as First-Gen Law Students
00:04:46
Speaker
Okay. What about you, Anju? What's your origin story? Why law?
00:04:50
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. So I'm so impressed Rose to hear that even in high school you were thinking about the law because I made it all the way through college and I still didn't really know what I wanted to do. I went to the University of Michigan for undergrad and kind of took advantage of that liberal arts education and just followed my passions and
00:05:17
Speaker
ended up majoring in, double majoring in psychology and women's studies, and always knew that I wanted to do, you know, social justice work, but didn't really know what that looked like, thought about social works, psychology, different things. I ended up staying in Ann Arbor after college because I loved it.
00:05:40
Speaker
and becoming a preschool teacher. So I've got some of that teaching experience too. And some of it is transferable, I would say. Positive reinforcement, right? So I was a preschool teacher part-time and the other part-time part of my job was working at a runaway youth shelter. And that's when I really started thinking about what I wanted to do. At that point, I thought I wanted to go into child advocacy.
00:06:08
Speaker
I loved working with kids, but I wanted to do something a little bit more on the macro level to help kids. And that's when I decided to go to law school. And somehow, even though I had never thought about law school before, I took the LSAT, was able to do well and got into Yale Law School. And I was first generation, right? My parents were both immigrants.
00:06:32
Speaker
I did not know any lawyers growing up. I did not know any lawyers by the time I went to law school, not a single one. I didn't have anyone to go to to ask for advice or what was law school going to be like. And here I am thrown into this top tier law school where I got there and the first day the other students were asking me which professors I got and had I read their articles and it felt very disorienting to me.
00:07:02
Speaker
And, you know, I didn't, I didn't know any of that stuff. And I think that made for a really challenging law school experience for me, at least to begin with. I would love to talk about that a little bit more because obviously at Rutgers, we have a lot of students who contest, who are first gen students, you know, first gen college, first gen law school. And so, you know, when you sort of walk into that space,
00:07:28
Speaker
And people are saying things. And by the way, incoming students, you don't have to read our Law Review articles. But when you walk into that space, what is it that allowed you to start to feel like you belong there and that you could be successful there? That's a great question. And actually, it leads to where I am now, right?
00:07:50
Speaker
Um, I would say for a good, you know, year, year and a half, I still felt pretty out of place. Um, right. Mira Deo talks about the accidental law professor. And I felt like I was the accidental law student. Like, how did I get in here? I don't belong here. Um, what am I doing here? Right. And for me, it wasn't until I found the immigration clinic there that I felt like, Oh, I know now what I can do with my law degree.
00:08:22
Speaker
So there was, you know, that piece of it, but also the timing. When I was a 2L in law school, that's when 9-11 happened.
00:08:32
Speaker
Like I said, I came to law school thinking I wanted to do child advocacy. And while I was in law school, the first year Bush v. Gore happened, right? And then the second year of law school, 9-11 happened, and the world kind of changed. And, you know, I started to realize that there weren't that many people at the time
00:08:52
Speaker
working in immigrant rights and that that's what I really wanted to do. So I ended up getting an internship with the ACLU Immigrant Rights Project that summer and then also joining the immigration clinic at the law school where I was able to represent a couple of people seeking asylum and they were still to this day some of the most impactful and meaningful cases I've ever worked on and that's when I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
00:09:24
Speaker
I had a different experience, thankfully, at American Washington College of Law.
Law School Experience and Community
00:09:31
Speaker
I am a first gen also, college and law school. And I just kind of maybe just share a little bit about my interactions with lawyers before I went to law school. So then there was that woman, a career day, who came and I was inspired, the only other lawyer that my family.
00:09:53
Speaker
So my senior year in high school, we lost our electricity, because my dad couldn't pay the bills. And then he was brought into court. And there was a lawyer representing the government, because we couldn't pay our electricity. And I knew that I wanted to be a lawyer, so I could represent people like my dad, who was so poor that it was like therapy now for me.
00:10:24
Speaker
So that was the only other lawyer I had experience with. And like in high school, we didn't, I didn't have electricity and I hated having a generator because it meant that we were so poor, we couldn't afford electricity. So anyway, that was the other only interaction I had with a lawyer until I went to law school. And then, um, thankfully I had a great experience in law school. Um, I, as a first gen student, I found my community.
00:10:52
Speaker
I became an active member of the Asian Pacific American Law School, Law Students Association. And I became friends with some of the leaders in Balsa and Lalsa and Lambda. And as one else, we just all got together and always planned events. And so I had
00:11:13
Speaker
a wonderful group of students who were like me, some of whom look like me, and we didn't have professors who looked like us. I think it was not until my second semester of law school that I had my first African-American professor ever, ever, no one in college, and then the first one in law school, second semester. I had a women professor my fall semester, but the community at
00:11:43
Speaker
WCL was such that it was I found it completely support a supportive environment and then my two well year there was a law professor who was being recruited let evil and I was then an active member of a policy and we threw her
00:11:59
Speaker
a welcoming reception. I think it must have been during her job talk. We had no idea what was going on. But we just said, this is the first Asian-American law faculty at this school. We're going to push for her to get hired. And we want her to come to us. So already, I knew we had this group of professors. Professor Angela Davis was already someone I loved and admired. And I just followed her everywhere in law school. And then Leti Volpe came in. And so for me, I would not trade my law school experience for anything because
00:12:29
Speaker
It fostered and supported my desire to do social justice work and public interest work. So my third year I did landlord tenant law and represented tenants in Washington DC for a whole year. That was what I did and fought against these slick lawyers who represented these apartment buildings that were trying to evict my clients who had nothing. And I felt empowered to represent them.
00:12:56
Speaker
Thank you for sharing that, Rose. And I think there are a few things that I think I want to sort of draw out of both of those stories that you all shared. I mean, one is the importance of seeing some sort of reflection of yourself, right? That makes you think, oh, that's a thing that I can do, right? That it's available to me. The second, and I say this to students all the time at orientation, find your people.
00:13:20
Speaker
when you get to law school, right? That's what makes it a community and that's what makes it a place where you can really thrive. And then the third thing, you know, one of the, I also always say to students, do not graduate from law school without doing a clinic.
00:13:34
Speaker
So can we talk about clinical work a little bit? I still remember the client I represented in my clinic, my third year of law school, and that experience shaped me deeply. So one, just sort of let for those who are listening who aren't familiar with law school or who are incoming students,
00:13:52
Speaker
Can we actually ask you, Andrew, because you actually run a clinic, what is the clinic experience? What do students do in a clinic? What are the options there? And why do all of us think that doing a clinic is really important? Yeah.
Clinical Law and Immigrant Advocacy
00:14:07
Speaker
So, I mean, we always tell students, if you came to law school to be a lawyer, it probably makes sense to do a clinic.
00:14:15
Speaker
I call clinic, many people call clinic practicing law in slow motion, right? So we have intentionally low caseloads in many of our clinics so that students really get a sense of what it's like to practice in kind of an ideal environment, right? Where you're supported.
00:14:38
Speaker
You have a safety net of your clinical professor who is there to make sure that you don't make any huge mistakes in your cases. But really, the idea is that students are the lawyers working on the cases. They have clients, and they are the lawyers. And that we, the faculty members, like I said, provide that safety net.
00:15:07
Speaker
and students do every aspect of client representation. That may look different in different clinics, right? We have small case clinics in which students might do multiple cases over the course of a semester. We have medium case clinics in which students might handle one case in the course of a semester. And then we have large case clinics in which students might in one semester take one piece of a larger case that's ongoing.
00:15:34
Speaker
um, maybe an impact litigation case, for example. So again, in all of these clinics, really the idea is for students to practice, um, as practicing lawyers. So, um, what you direct the immigrant rights clinic. Um, and so what kind of work do you students do when they re when they register for the immigrant rights clinic? Yeah. So in my clinic, we represent clients in fear-based claims.
00:16:02
Speaker
So, for example, we don't represent people who are seeking work visas or visas based on a family petition. But we represent a lot of refugees who are seeking asylum, so people who have been persecuted or fear persecution in their home countries on account of race, religion,
00:16:23
Speaker
nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. We also represent trafficking victims to get T visas. We represent victims of other crimes. We represent domestic violence victims to be able to petition for themselves because their spouse is not petitioning for them as part of the cycle of abuse.
00:16:48
Speaker
So a lot of different categories of claims right now do in part to state and county grants that we've received. We're really focusing on individuals who are detained in the New Jersey detention centers, but still in all of those types of claims. So I want to talk about this work more and I want to shift to Rose. One of the things that you talked about, Andree, was the idea of
00:17:14
Speaker
impact litigation, which everybody doesn't necessarily understand what we mean when we talk about impact litigation versus direct services. So I want to switch to Rose. So Rose, you are the founder of the Rucker Center for Immigration Law Policy and Justice. And one of the things that impact litigation does is it helps create
00:17:34
Speaker
policy, right? It helps sort of change the rules that are then applied in terms of direct services work. So can you talk to us a little bit about what you do in your center and sort of, you know, why you feel like creating that center was important, particularly in the time that we're living through now? So thank you. That's a great question and sort of a way to distinguish the work that the center does from
00:17:59
Speaker
what Anju just said with respect to the clinic. So my, the CILPJ, the Center for Immigration Law Policy and Justice focuses on creating, working on policies through research, through legal advocacy, legislative advocacy rather, so that we can hopefully create impactful statewide changes. And so in the last couple of years, we worked directly with community-based organizations to help
00:18:28
Speaker
passed legislation that led to immigrants in New Jersey who can get access to professional licenses, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status.
00:18:40
Speaker
We helped to pass legislation that would allow undocumented immigrants to get a license, also a driver's license, regardless of citizenship status. And I know that some of those involved in the clinic and go on juice fellows were also involved in this work. And so part of being in the center allows me to also collaborate with students who are doing direct services type of work.
00:19:05
Speaker
But the other thing that we do through the center is to think also broadly about how else we can make New Jersey a much more inclusive and welcoming state for immigrants and their families. One of the research projects we're doing right now for which we receive grants
00:19:21
Speaker
is to look at the impact that the New Jersey Immigrant Trust Directive has done to the state, how it has created social and legal changes in law enforcement. The Immigrant Trust Directive says that
00:19:37
Speaker
law enforcement officers will not ask an immigrant what his or her immigration status is, and even if they find out what the status is, that they will not report that information to ICE. It was designed to foster trust, community trust, and community building, and really to create some kind of safe space
00:19:59
Speaker
for immigrants, particularly a few years ago when President Trump was still in office and he engaged in heightened immigration enforcement. So the Immigrant Trust Directive came out in 2018 and it was instrumental in allowing for residents in New Jersey to feel much more safe engaging with local law enforcement. But we don't really know how much it has changed the culture
00:20:27
Speaker
in state and local police departments. It's one thing for the attorney general to say, this is who we are, right? But it's also another to actually look to see, are these officers really listening? Because what we found through our research is that a number of them have been resisting just these, the immigrant trust directive. And that's the kind of work that we want to
00:20:49
Speaker
to share with the public. Once we're done with this research, we want to be able to issue, we're going to issue a report and we're going to make it accessible to the public. All the various public records requests that we were able to get from more than 600 law enforcement agencies, we're going to share that information. And the hope is that some of the gaps in the immigrant trust directive, both in terms of how the law is written, but also how it's enforced, will strengthen this immigrant trust directive.
00:21:19
Speaker
So the hope that I have for the center is to engage in policy work so that we can create broad systemic change outside of litigation. And through the center, my students and I are able to learn other ways that their legal
00:21:35
Speaker
education can better serve communities, even if it means not going to court, not actually engaging in litigation or other types of advocacy. Absolutely. And I think one of the things that we always try to impress upon our students is that there are lots of ways to use a law degree and lots of ways to change the world with a law degree, if that's what you want to do. I want to spend a few minutes talking sort of more generally about immigration in this country.
Post-9/11 Immigration Law Changes
00:22:05
Speaker
and how incredibly fraught the topic has become. You were talking, Anju, about when you were in law school, when 9-11 happened, and I think for folks who were
00:22:20
Speaker
sort of not old enough to remember the kind of shift in the country that happened post 9-11, that they've grown up in a world in which somehow immigration has become this dirty word almost. And so I wonder if you can talk a little bit about once or the politics of immigration in terms of what we're living through now.
00:22:42
Speaker
about the ways in which shifts in presidential administrations has an impact on what is going on with immigrants and also sort of what you see as the future, right? Do you think that we're going to get to a place where we really are embracing who we are, which is frankly a nation of immigrants? Rose, do you want to start and then I'll go back to Anju.
00:23:10
Speaker
I asked a lot of things there, so just take whatever you want to and run with it. The 9-11's 20th anniversary is coming up in about a month from now. And Anju and I and some of our colleagues actually in the law school are thinking about how we can remember what would be a meaningful way of remembering 9-11. As I think about 9-11, I am reminded of how much immigration law has changed.
00:23:39
Speaker
Congress created an entirely new department, the Department of Homeland Security, and it's been premised on security and anti-terrorism. And so since 9-11, immigration laws approach has shifted towards treating immigrants and particularly some immigrants with a lot of deep concerns about who they are and policies and
00:24:08
Speaker
implementation of policies and practices have centered on basically excluding many immigrants. And that's not to say that immigration law has been welcoming. If anything, immigration law has been designed from the very beginning to be as exclusive as possible. Citizenship law worked alongside immigration to ensure that the United States had, for the most part of the United States history, remained a white nation.
00:24:37
Speaker
By 1960s, that has changed. And since the 1960s, we've seen a much more diverse immigrant stream. But then 9-11 was a turning point. It did magnify the kind of enforcement approach to immigration that's designed to root some people out and address. And for people who are already in the United States, to consider them as suspicious,
00:25:02
Speaker
individuals such that we had to follow where they were going, we had to require some immigrants and citizens to register, right, to bring back some of the awful policies we had earlier in the mid 20th century. So 20 years later, we can focus on the Department of Homeland Security and
00:25:25
Speaker
the template that Congress created that different presidents built upon to enforce immigration law and lead to thousands of immigrants who have lived here for a long time being removed and be separated from their families or have this template of immigration law that allowed for the previous president to pass executive orders that stopped immigrants from seeking
00:25:54
Speaker
asylum and to gain refugee status and then to separate children at the border from their parents. He's no longer in office, but a lot of the policies that he passed are still in place and the work that President Biden is doing right now to try to undo that is taking some time
00:26:12
Speaker
The world also is in a pandemic that presented additional challenges to immigration law. And so I think, although we have a new president that seems to be committed to a much more inclusive and welcoming immigration law, the law itself has not changed. We have a different president, and he's trying to create some changes, but he's not there yet because many of the changes in policies still remain in place.
00:26:41
Speaker
So I want to ask you one more question, Rose, and then I want to jump over to Andrew. And one of the things I'd love to talk to you about, Andrew, is the relationship between criminal law and immigration and the ways in which sort of criminal law is being used as a way of keeping people from having legal status in the United States. So the thing I wanted to ask you about, Rose, is oftentimes what you will hear people say is, well, do it legally.
00:27:10
Speaker
There are all these ways that you can come to this country and just get in line and do it legally. And that's what my great, great grandparents did. But it's not quite that easy, is it? So can you just talk a little bit about what the path is if you want to become a citizen here?
Misconceptions in Legal Immigration
00:27:30
Speaker
Yeah, you always hear, why don't you just get in line? So picture going to a grocery store. And then the statement that says, just get in line and do it legally. Just go through, find a line, and check out, right? So that presumes that there's a checkout line for every single person who is at the grocery store. It's not an act analogy, but I think visually this is probably a way to highlight that there's just not a line for a lot of people.
00:27:58
Speaker
The immigration law that we have right now was written in 1952, and it allows for three main ways to come to the United States, family, employment, and diversity. A fourth way is through refugee.
00:28:13
Speaker
and asylum law that is extremely difficult to get, just like all the other three. So those are the four legal ways to come to the United States. And those slots, there are slots available that are limited. And so there aren't enough visas available to meet the demands for immigrants in this country. There are a lot of employers who want to employ immigrants,
00:28:43
Speaker
They cannot do so under the four lawful ways that are allowed. There are other ways that they can do so, but it's just not enough. And so when people say, I get so frustrated when people say, just do what my family did. And actually, if you go through the United States history, it was never the case that we were open borders. You couldn't just come in and then enter with no problems. Immigrants.
00:29:10
Speaker
the majority of immigrants, except those who are coming from Northern and Western Europe, everybody else redeemed with so much suspicion and had to go through the kind of vetting, extreme vetting maybe might be a little too strong to say, but it was not the case that anyone can just step foot on Ellis Island or Angel Island in California.
00:29:34
Speaker
and be allowed in with welcoming arms. So despite what we see, the image of the Statue of Liberty and whatever it says on the bottom of the plaque that says, give me your tire, give me your poor, that is actually inconsistent from immigration law as written and as practiced.
00:29:56
Speaker
Thanks. So, Andrew, I want to talk now with you about refugees and asylum, because I think that's a space where a lot of people are sort of confused about what that system is and how it works.
Complexities of Refugee and Asylum Law
00:30:11
Speaker
So can you give us sort of refugee law 101 in a minute, right? So when we talk about people who come here as refugees or who are seeking asylum, who are we talking about and what do they have to do in order to get status here?
00:30:26
Speaker
Yeah, so really we're talking about forced migrants, right? So we're talking about individuals who are fleeing because of a fear in their home country. Under both the international treaty, the refugee convention, as well as US asylum law, which implements our obligations under the treaty,
00:30:53
Speaker
People, like I said before, who either have been persecuted, and when we talk about persecution, we're talking about some kind of severe harm, right, which can range from, you know, beatings to rape to torture.
00:31:09
Speaker
those types of things. So who have experienced those things or who fear, who reasonably fear those things happening to them in the future because of their race, their religion, their political opinion, their nationality, or their membership in a particular social group. So this is who we're talking about when we talk about a refugee or an asylum seeker.
00:31:34
Speaker
And so once we know who the category of people are, what does it take to become a legitimate asylee in the United States? How do you prove that? And then how do you get legal status here? There are kind of two main mechanisms, right? So one is overseas refugee processing. And that's not something that we in our clinic really deal with.
00:32:02
Speaker
Because that sort of all happens abroad where someone is processed and then, you know, they're brought over either here or to one of many other countries that has agreed to take a certain number of refugees each year.
00:32:16
Speaker
And then there are people who get here and then seek asylum. So they can get here any number of ways. They can cross the border by foot, the southern border, for example. They can get here on a flight because they have a tourist visa. We used to get a lot more of those cases where someone had a tourist visa, which is limited in time. Tourist visas are generally only six-month visas,
00:32:44
Speaker
But they would get here, and then once they got here, they would say, okay, I need to stay because I'm afraid to go back. And then there are people who maybe come here on a student visa, and then once their education is completed, they can't stay on that student visa. And maybe things have happened since they were
00:33:07
Speaker
Um, since they initially arrived where they now can't go back, right? Or on any number of visas, right? So people are here physically and they know that they can't go back. So people can.
00:33:19
Speaker
either apply for asylum, affirmatively, if they're already in the country and they have not yet had any contact with ICE, so they haven't been apprehended, they're not in detention, they're just here, either because they came across the border and were not apprehended, or because they were here on a visa.
00:33:38
Speaker
they can affirmatively apply for asylum, or if someone is picked up by ICE, either at the border or in a raid, they can then, they're immediately put into what are now called removal proceedings. They used to be called deportation proceedings. And then they can apply for, or they can, what's called defensively apply for asylum.
00:34:00
Speaker
at that point. But how do people know that it's available to them? And then how do people get a lawyer? How do they get represented? Yeah, great questions. So in terms of how do they know?
00:34:14
Speaker
word of mouth, right? Or they might tell, you know, if someone's coming up from the southern border, for example, or even through an airport, they might tell the immigration officer up front, I'm afraid, right? And as soon as they say those words, I'm afraid, they have to be given what's called a credible fear interview. And then they're kind of, you know, put in that system, the asylum system.
00:34:43
Speaker
Um, otherwise people might just find out word of mouth or they might go to an attorney and say, um, I want to stay and this is why, what are my options? Um, unfortunately many asylum seekers do not have lawyers. They don't have.
00:35:01
Speaker
Unlike in the criminal system, they don't have a right to a government funded lawyer, right? So we've all seen all the cop shows, right, where, you know, someone's getting arrested and they give the Miranda warnings and it's, you know, you have a right to an attorney if you cannot afford one, so one will be appointed to you. That right does not exist in the immigration
00:35:23
Speaker
system. Immigration proceedings are considered civil in nature. And many of us have argued that that doesn't feel right. There is just as much of a liberty interest in immigration cases as there is in criminal cases. Someone could still be detained in literally a prison, even though it's not considered punishment. Many people are detained in
00:35:51
Speaker
prisons with criminal defendants, right? Or with people serving out their sentences. So, you know, there's just as much a liberty interest and then people could be deported back to a place where they could be tortured or killed, right? So many of us have argued that that doesn't feel right, that they should have a right to government appointed counsel. They have a right to counsel, but not one that is paid by the government.
00:36:19
Speaker
So unfortunately, that means two things. One, a lot of asylum seekers don't have attorneys, which is very unfortunate because study after study has shown that the single most determinative factor in whether someone wins their asylum case is whether they're represented or not. And the second thing that it means is that unfortunately, in the immigration bar, there is sometimes
00:36:46
Speaker
exploitation of these individuals because people don't have a lot of money. A lot of asylum seekers are escaping with nothing but the shirts on their backs. And so they'll come and they're in a state of desperation and either lawyers or non-lawyers will say, oh, give me $5,000 and I will get you asylum.
00:37:17
Speaker
And then they don't, right? And the consequence of that is that the person is deported and they're not gonna file a bar complaint from wherever they are, right? So there is that. And then there's also the fact that again, a lot of asylum seekers don't have a lot of money. And so in order to just pay the bills, oftentimes immigration attorneys are forced to take on a lot of cases in order to
00:37:46
Speaker
Again, just be able to pay the bills. So, you know, there are certainly some problems there. We are fortunate enough in the clinic to be able to provide free legal services to clients. Again, there, I think there's a lot of misinformation, right? A lot of times immigrants come thinking, oh, if they're free, if the services are free, they can't be as good. So I need to find a paid attorney, right?
00:38:12
Speaker
In fact, studies show that law school clinics have an even higher percentage of success than the private immigration bar. And there are lots of reasons for that, including case selection and all of those things. But my point is that I think clinics and public interest organizations that provide pro bono services do, in fact, do a really excellent job with these cases. Yeah, thank you for that.
00:38:41
Speaker
Um, so Rose, I want to, I want to go back to you maybe to give us some more, the kind of, um, again, the kind of bigger picture,
Biden Administration and Immigration Reform
00:38:49
Speaker
right? So we've got Biden, um, in office now and, you know, lots of expectations that people have placed, um, on this administration. Um, but we still have. A bunch of detention centers, right? Um, we still have people who, as Andrew said, don't have access to representation. Um, we still have a system that is.
00:39:12
Speaker
divided depending upon what countries you're coming from, right? So, you know, if you had a magic wand, you know, what are some of the things that we need to change within our system in order to make it one that feels more just? So one approach I have been advocating for is for the Department of Homeland Security.
00:39:36
Speaker
to engage in anti-racist work. And what that means for me is for the department to acknowledge that immigration law has a history of racism, both in law and practice, and the law has been implemented in ways that has led to enforcement of immigration law against immigrants of color, particularly Latino, Latinas, but also
00:40:06
Speaker
Asian Americans and black immigrants. So to me at the outset, particularly in this racial reckoning that our country is experiencing, immigration law should consider the role that race and racism played.
00:40:24
Speaker
in how it affected the racial subordination of immigrants. Immigration law does not have to be that way. Immigration law can be designed so that it fosters a, it creates, it's a much more welcoming approach and it's an approach that recognizes diversity.
00:40:44
Speaker
and treats immigrants as people who would contribute to society in many ways, socially, culturally, economically. And that there are, for some immigrants, because of the countries that they came from, because of the policies that the United States engaged in,
00:41:09
Speaker
meant that we had a role in why they're coming here in the first place. And so that, to me, is also rooted in racism and some of the colonialist policies that the United States practiced many years ago. So if I had a magic wand, that would be one way. It would not fix everything, but I would push for a reckoning within
00:41:36
Speaker
immigration law, the leaders, but also those who are enforcing immigration law on the ground to realize that all of us have implicit biases built in. And then we need to undo that by understanding how all of us can engage in anti-racist practice.
00:42:00
Speaker
Because I see just like as a law professor and I research not only immigration but also citizenship and my other areas in property law, there's so much promise in the law and how the law was designed. But it's just that the way that it was enforced was not the, in my view, not the way that it promoted equality and instead led to subordination and inequities that historically happened and continues to happen today.
00:42:30
Speaker
So yeah, I would love to sort of continue that strain of that conversation, right? Because you are one of the professors at the law school who teaches critical race theory. And we are living through a time when critical race theory or some completely warped vision
00:42:51
Speaker
of critical race theory is being vilified. And it seems like there's some backlash happening because we've had this moment of racial reckoning. And of course, it started with 2016 and Trump, and then we had the January 6th insurrection. There are so many difficult conversations about race that people seem to be very afraid
00:43:20
Speaker
to have in this country. And so I wonder, obviously we can't fix everything, but we are a law school, right? And as you said, we are teaching students law that has been forged within a country that has had a race problem from the very beginning. So what are your thoughts about what we should be doing as an institution, as a law school, what other law schools?
00:43:49
Speaker
should be doing to help produce lawyers who are thinking about the law in these kind of critical ways. So I view my role as a professor, as a legal educator, as someone whose job is to do at least three things. One is to teach students what the law is. Second, how the law has been applied. How did it apply before and how does it apply going forward? And then the third, should that be the law?
00:44:18
Speaker
So I think it's important for us to understand the relationships among all three. Critical race theory comes in to say what the law is, the way that the law, as we understand it today, how it's been described by others, has not been neutral.
00:44:36
Speaker
If we're studying formal equality, we need to go deeper. We need to understand that the way that the law is right now has been shaped in many ways by race, racism and power and the use of the law to racially subordinate people of color.
Addressing Systemic Racism in Law
00:44:53
Speaker
So that's not, that should not be, it should not be problematic to think of understanding the law
00:45:01
Speaker
as the way that it's been formulated, the way it's been shaped, as is. That's what the law is, right? And so then we go to the next step. How does the law apply? Well, if the law was created such that it was already systemically produced systemic inequality, then as applied, it'll continue to do that. And so we need to understand precisely how is this an ongoing reproduction
00:45:26
Speaker
of racism and racial subordination. So then that gets me to the third step, which is to me is the most important part when I teach law, whether it's property law or critical race theory, is that what should the law be? The normative implications of the law. How should we redesign if we need to, if people accept that the law
00:45:47
Speaker
has been shaped in large part by racism and sexism and a whole host of other factors. If that truly is what the law is, then what are you going to do about it? That's a challenge for our law students. Why are you in law school? What do you plan to do with your law degree in order to make the kind of transformative change that you want to see for yourself and for others in this society? The work that we do, I hope,
00:46:15
Speaker
that when they come to law school, we've promised them a legal education that is rooted in academic excellence, inclusivity, and social justice. How do we actually practice that in our classrooms, in the clinics? And then importantly, how can we support students who want to do that kind of work? Yeah. And I think one of the things that is really important is it doesn't have to be the case that you go out into the world as a public interest lawyer.
00:46:43
Speaker
in order to effectuate change, right? So I think about, and I often sort of use this example with students, you know, if you were at your law firm and you're sitting around the table and you say, you know, there's no people of color or there are no women, or, you know, you might be the voice that says, what is happening here, right? Why are we not doing better here? And what are we missing out on?
00:47:04
Speaker
by virtue of the fact that we're not doing better here. So I've consumed a lot of your time. So I want to switch gears for the last time here and circle back to where we were at the beginning and thinking about law school and becoming lawyers and the importance of representation.
Impact of Diverse Leadership
00:47:24
Speaker
And one of the things that I could not be prouder about is what our leadership team looks like at Rutgers Law School this year.
00:47:35
Speaker
You just can't stack any other school up against us. I just think that that's absolutely true. So Rose and I are co-deans. Both of us are women of color. Both of us are first in our roles in many ways. Rose is
00:47:51
Speaker
I'm the first Filipina American law dean in the country, which is just amazing. And the first woman of Asian descent who is the dean at Rutgers Newark Law School. I'm the first woman, the first black person, the first queer person to be the dean at Rutgers Law in Camden. We have two vice deans, both of whom are also women of color, which is amazing.
00:48:19
Speaker
And then we have two associate deans of academic affairs, both of whom are also women. So I would love to hear, as we sort of finish this out today, I would just love to hear both of you talk about what it means, one, to be a part of a group like that, but also what you think it means in terms of where law schools are going, in terms of, you know,
00:48:42
Speaker
how much leadership matters at our institutions and the ways in which you think having a leadership team like this has a positive impact on the institution.
00:48:54
Speaker
Anju, do you want to start? Where to begin, right? It's so inspiring to be a part of this team, kind of circling back to the beginning of our interview. I think if you had told that law student in the year 2000, 2001,
00:49:19
Speaker
that this is where I would be someday. I wouldn't have believed you, right? Like I said, taking a clinic changed my life and I felt like, okay, this is where I fit in. This is what I can do. But even then, never did I deign to think that I could become a law professor and actually serve that role for other
00:49:44
Speaker
future lawyers or students, let alone become a part of an administration and one that looks like this. This just wasn't happening back then. Frankly, this isn't really happening now. And it's happening here at Rutgers. And I think it's so incredibly exciting. I think it's so important for students to see
00:50:13
Speaker
people who look like us in these roles, people who look like them, frankly, in these roles, right? And I just, like you said, I couldn't be prouder of this institution and I couldn't be more excited to see where we go from here. I agree with what Anju said.
00:50:34
Speaker
Well, I guess to begin, I too did not think I would become a law professor. I remember when I said that there was this professor, Lettie Volt, that we helped to recruit to Washington College of Law, and I then ended up becoming her research assistant. And it was my 3L year that she said, you should really consider going into law school. I was in law review, and I published.
00:50:57
Speaker
And she said, that's what it means that you get paid to research and write about issues that you care about. And then you get to share that knowledge with law students and then they can become lawyers or judges. And I thought, well, yeah, that's a really great gig. How does that happen? And so she and Angela Davis and Susan Carl at WCL kind of supported me along the way. And then I ended up where I am.
00:51:21
Speaker
I didn't think I would ever become a law school administrator or law dean. So this too, I'm grateful for this opportunity. It certainly is a lot of work, particularly in this pandemic. But I care deeply about the importance of visibility and the time when it's time to rise to the occasion and make the kind of change that you want that one can make. And you can make that.
00:51:50
Speaker
by being a faculty member and serving on a committee and trying to create changes. And you can also make those changes by being in leadership and having a seat at the table.
00:52:01
Speaker
to work with others and create the kind of impactful work that you want and change that you want to create. And I feel that's what we have. We have a really wonderful team. I've been at different law schools, as you know. And this is the, I've been really fortunate to be able to work closely with Kim the last three years, and then now closely with Anju and Caroline and Stacy, and then continue to work with Kim in a different capacity. So I'm just excited.
00:52:30
Speaker
and happy that we are here to show other lawyers and lawyers to be that through leadership, we can create the kind of law school that we want to have for our students, for our communities. Absolutely. And I sort of think about this a lot. So Camille Nelson, who was the dean at WCL at one point,
00:53:00
Speaker
Is a friend and mentor and many many years ago before I was even thinking about Actually, I never really thought about law school administration. I just sort of fell into it But I remember her having a conversation with a few of us at a conference and she was a dean already At that point she was at Suffolk and and she said to us, you know, we can't complain about what law school leadership looks like if none of us are willing to
00:53:28
Speaker
to take those roles, right? And I think that's true across a whole host of different domains, whether it is, you know, whether you wanna be on the partner track at your law firm, whether you wanna run the AG's office, right? I mean, all of those things. And I certainly understand, I definitely understand the personal sacrifice involved in taking some of these jobs, but the fact that we get to work together, the fact that we get to work
00:53:54
Speaker
really creatively to think about this institution and how to continue to make it be excellent while also being inclusive and also thinking about the social justice implications of being a lawyer. It's an enormous gift. It really is.
00:54:12
Speaker
So I want to thank both of you for taking the time to have this conversation with me today. It's always so nice to be able to learn a little bit more about my colleagues and the work that we're doing. So thank you so much for taking the time and we'll be seeing a lot more of each other.
00:54:30
Speaker
Thank you for having us.