This past week, students in the UC Davis School of Law Immigration Law Clinic, working under the supervision of Lecturer and Staff Attorney Raha Jorjani, were successful in preventing the deportation of a detained client.
Working on behalf of their client, they succeeded in filing a Motion to Terminate removal proceedings that cited recent U.S. Supreme Court opinions in arguing that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had not met its burden of proof in establishing that the client’s criminal convictions were deportable under the Immigration and National Security Act.
This was just one of many victories for the Immigration Law Clinic which provides legal representation to indigent non-citizens in removal proceedings before U.S. Immigration Courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals and federal courts, including the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
It provides this necessary service to Northern California’s immigrant communities, offering education and legal services to low-income immigrants facing deportation while enabling students to gain practical, real-world experience.
Ana Biocini shared her experience with the UC Davis Immigration Law Clinic.
She described her experience as having “a transcendental importance in my life because it was the light and the hope that radically changed my future for good, after having been sentenced to deportation as a result of being convicted on federal charges.”
The Immigration Law Clinic got involved in her case when she was serving 24 months in Dublin. The INS put an Immigration Hold on her and she had to fight deportation.
“We have two courts in that facility but without any luck,” she said. “The day I finished my time in Dublin, INS pick me up and detained me and send me to a facility in Bakersfield.”
“Although I felt very lonely I always had the company of (Holly Cooper) and her students who never abandoned me and they were doing many motions and negotiations in courts for my liberation,” Ms. Biocini said.
Finally, after several months, Associate Director and Staff Attorney Holly Cooper and her students were successful with a Habeas Corpus motion that liberated Ana Biocini from the Bakersfield facility.
“Since them I am out and they continued to fight my case. Recently we won an appeal in the Ninth Circuit and now Holly (Cooper) and the students are getting ready to file a new brief with a new law that will give me back my permanent residency again,” she said. “This is unbelievable but it is true. I was blessed to have them with me.”
Founded in 1982, the Immigration Law Clinic has helped thousands of people just like Ana Biocini. In their 30th Anniversary article, Dean Kevin Johnson credited founder James Smith with being “way ahead of the curve” in recognizing the civil rights dimension of immigration law and pushing for the establishment of the Clinic more than 30 years ago.
“Jim realized early on that the immigrant community was a vulnerable community that would need legal assistance in trying to make a life in this country,” Dean Johnson said. “He really deserves credit for being a visionary, which is a term that can sometimes be overused, but in Jim’s case I think it is one that is aptly identified with him.”
Dean Johnson also noted that Professor Smith was at the forefront of recognizing that clinical education “was the wave of the future.”
The idea of an Immigration Law Clinic at King Hall, Professor Smith said, emerged during a time when he made trips to Central America, and a visit to a refugee camp in Chiapas, Mexico.
He said, “”It seemed to address several goals that I strongly believed in: providing law students with hands-on lawyering experience in deportation and asylum hearings, addressing the frustrations of law students who wanted to help underserved populations while in law school, combining theory and practice in King Hall’s curriculum, and providing legal services to the marginalized immigrant population, not only through the few cases the Clinic could realistically accept but also through community education.”
The Vanguard spoke with Raha Jorjani, who has been one of the supervising staff attorneys at the law clinic since 2007. She focuses on detained individuals primarily, who have been convicted of crimes and who are facing deportations in part due to criminal convictions.
“Almost all of my clients, if not all of them, are at least initially detained by the Department of Homeland Security,” Ms. Jorjani said. She also advises local public defenders in the area of the consequences of criminal convictions.
The Supreme Court since 2010 held that there is a Sixth Amendment duty that criminal defense attorneys have to provide immigration advice to individuals who are considering taking a plea bargain – so that they know the immigration consequences of the conviction.
“The preventative work that we do is to advise public defenders who are representing the people in criminal court as to how to craft the plea so that it avoids or mitigates immigration consequence,” Ms. Jorjani stated.
At times they go into a criminal court and attempt to get post-conviction relief where they “go into criminal court and (they) try to undo a conviction that has been done.” They try to vacate that conviction “and either replace it with another conviction that doesn’t have as harsh immigration consequences or just have that conviction dismissed altogether.”
Much of the work done here is done by second and third year law students. The cases are under the supervision of the staff attorneys, which is required by law since the students are not attorneys yet.
Once the students reach their second or third year, they are allowed to take clinics as part of their curriculum. The demand is greater than the supply of positions, so they have to apply in a heavily competitive process.
They choose approximately 20 to 24 students to come on board with the Immigration Clinic.
“We get a lot of students who say that they picked Davis as the law school they wanted to go to because of the reputation of the Immigration Clinic,” Ms. Jorjani said. “It really is a part of the law school,” and really is something that students look to when they apply to law school.
“We really try to instill early on that the clients are their clients,” Ms. Jorjani stated. “These are their cases and we want them to be accountable for the cases. We want them to develop case theories. We want them to build rapport with their clients to really take charge of the cases.”
Staff Attorneys like Raha Jorjani are both staff attorneys and lecturers. They are part of the non-senate faculty, but they are not part of the voting faculty in the law school.
Law schools typically run clinics within their programs. There is growing awareness of the significance of clinical education and experiential learning within the law school curriculum.
“If you’re an employer, you really want to know that the student did more than just take classes,” Raha Jorjani explained. The experience of having an actual client, arguing in court, and navigating through real world cases is invaluable to the student’s experience and future employability.
“As an immigration clinic, I think that we are unique in the way in which we focus on immigration and crimes,” she continued, noting that while they are not the only law school that has done this work, their focus on removal defense makes them unique. “We focus on some of the most marginalized members of our society. People that have not only been marginalized by the criminal justice system, in an era of mass incarceration… but they are also marginalized because they are not US citizens, so it’s sort of a double-marginalization that they face.”
Law students are able to actually represent clients in the Ninth Circuit with clearance and paper work, and work under the supervision of an attorney.
Charlene Chen worked in the Immigration Law Clinic her final year of law school, under the supervision of Associate Director, Staff Attorney Holly Cooper.
“Holly was pretty great,” she described. “We would have weekly meetings where we would set an agenda” that laid out their strategy for defending individuals who were caught up in the system. But for the most part, with input from the supervising attorneys, “we kind of ran the show.”
Ms. Chen described a case involving a lesbian from Jamaica, arrested and held in custody for a year and half when ICE put an immigration hold on her.
“She’s unfortunately still detained,” Ms. Chen said. “We did a bond hearing for her. The Judge denied it without any justification. It’s still in remand proceedings.”
The second half of her time in the clinic she did oral arguments in the Ninth Circuit for another client.
Scott Gryzenczyk worked at the Immigration Law Clinic back in 2010. He worked mostly on a single case, an appeal that went up through the Ninth Circuit.
He continued to work on that case after he passed the bar and even up until the time that he started working at his current job, in an unrelated field of law.
“The immigration clinic is an incredibly dedicated group of people who really believe in their clients, and who really believe in what they are doing,” he said.
Raha Jorjani described an inspiring situation of a lesson learned by the students. Many people stay detained due to their economic status. The students often obtain initial release based on their ability to convince the judge to set a bond sufficiently low so that their clients can afford to pay it.
The legal minimum is about $1500 and there is no such thing as a release on their own recognizance by an immigration judge.
“The students had one client who was a transgender female in the immigration proceedings, in her early twenties, Ms. Jorjani described. “She was undocumented but had been convicted of just a petty theft.”
They got her the minimum bond, but she could not afford even that.
“The students were stunned that what some people would spend on an item of clothing or a purse, was basically standing between a young woman in her twenties and her freedom,” she continued. They created something they called a ‘bond fund.’ “They baked cookies. They baked cakes. They basically did a whole bake sale and explained to their peers that the purpose of the bake sale was to raise money to pay their client’s bond.”
Ultimately, they succeeded in raising the money needed to pay the bond. They did not stop there, but they created a bond fund so that they could do this for other clients, as well. Once the bond was returned after winning the case, the money went back into the fund.
“The idea was that the clients would re-donate the money to the bond fund and that money could be available to use for the next person,” she said. “To me that really illustrates our students coming into their own and realizing what devastation that is, immigration detention and the importance of freedom.”
“UC Davis School of Law is proud of the Immigration Law Clinic and the skills and social justice training that it offers our law students,” Dean Kevin Johnson told the Vanguard this week. “One of the first law school immigration clinics in the United States when it was established more than 30 years ago, the Clinic was at the cutting edge of legal education and has become an integral part of Martin Luther King Jr. Hall.”
James Smith said, “The impact on the lives of those fortunate enough to have the clinic take their case cannot be overstated. In hundreds of cases, the students have prevented the deportation or incarceration, or both, of their clients and provided for the unification of families.”
Dean Johnson added, “We are pleased that the UC Davis Immigration Law Clinic is being recognized for its extraordinary work with a Vanguard Award. “
On Saturday, the Vanguard will award the UC Davis Immigration Law Clinic with its honor for Universities and Law Schools in their greatness in furthering social justice. On hand to receive that award will be the founder James Smith who directed the clinic until his retirement in 2007, and Associate Director Holly Cooper.
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—David M. Greenwald reporting
What federal crime was Ana Biocini convicted of?
Holly Cooper rocks.
Biocini was convicted of conspiracy to distribute cocaine. Specifically she plead guilty to a drug trafficking charge which consisted of conspiracy to distribute 5-15kg of cocaine.
From an article in the SFGate in May 12, 1995:
[quote]Twenty-seven people have been indicted in the case since last Friday, ranging from alleged street-level retailers like the Portofino’s owners, to alleged wholesalers like [b]Ana Beatriz Biocini[/b] of Sausalito, who allegedly obtained cocaine from the Cali Cartel in Colombia.[/quote]
The Narcotic News website states the wholesale value of a kg of cocaine is $20,000-27,000. At $25,000/kg she was convicted of trafficking cocaine valued from $125,000-375,000 wholesale. Nice to see the UCDavis law clinic is doing such a fine job in helping entrepreneurs like Ana obtain residency status. She could have kept quite a few street corner dealers employed had she not been caught. Perhaps now that she apparently has legal residency status she might be able to sponsor some other entrepreneurs from Medellin Columbia. With a little work and start-up dollars from the city she might even be able to establish a western regional distributorship of that white powder right here in Davis’s own new Innovation Park.