2019WINTER INTERSESSION COURSE 13 law students learned about U.S. border immigration policy and practice and volunteered through the Dilley Pro Bono Project
2020WINTER INTERSESSION COURSE 8 law students learned about U.S. border immigration policy and practice and volunteered through the Dilley Pro Bono Project
ALUMNI, STAFF, AND OTHER VOLUNTEERS SERVICE TRIPS June 2018 — 18 volunteers November 2018 — 15 volunteers June 2019 — 15 volunteers November 2019 — 12 volunteers
Emil Gumpert Remote Prep Pilot Project In 2018, the American College of Trial Lawyers jointly awarded the Feerick Center and Proyecto Dilley its prestigious Emil Gumpert Award. This Award enabled the two partners to design, pilot, and implement the Remote Prep Pilot Project. (See Statement from Shalyn Fluharty of Proyecto Dilley on page 42). This effort leveraged technology to enable highly-skilled and trained volunteers to provide telephonic limited-scope legal assistance to Spanish- speaking asylum-seeking women detained with their children in the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. The Remote Prep Pilot Project utilized technology to ensure that expert staff could provide simultaneous supervision and support. The lessons learned from the Pilot Project have been shared through national webinars. Pro Bono Net has spotlighted the Remote Prep Pilot Project in its manual of pioneering models for the provision of remote legal services, Remote Legal Support Guide: A Guide for Nonprofit and Pro Bono Innovation (May 2020). This innovative model has already been replicated in another pilot to provide remote legal assistance to asylum-seekers placed in Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) or the “Remain in Mexico” program and is being utilized by Proyecto Dilley to serve clients at the South Texas Family Residential Center during the pandemic when in-person access to the facility is prohibited. (See next column for a fuller explanation of MPP.) In addition, the Feerick Center is drawing from its experience here to design the Remote CLARO Pilot Project in New York City.
Development of Innovative Animated Know-Your-Rights Presentation for Asylum-Seekers Placed in the Migrant Protection Protocols Program In January 2019, the federal government instituted MPP or the “Remain in Mexico” program. As of August 2020, an estimated 60,000 asylum-seekers have been forced to remain in Mexico while their applications are processed, under extremely dangerous conditions where they are persecuted by cartels and Mexican authorities because of their status in MPP. By design, asylum-seekers placed in MPP face significantly greater barriers to access to counsel and to successfully litigating their asylum claims. In addition, human rights organizations have documented over a thousand cases of kidnappings, rapes, beatings, and extortion. The COVID-19 pandemic now presents another grave threat to the health and safety of asylum-seekers placed in MPP. The Feerick Center partnered with national immigration advocacy organizations, Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC) and HIAS, to develop an innovative animated know-your-rights video and recording for asylum- seekers placed in MPP. The video strives to provide critically- important information to asylum-seekers placed in MPP through accessible media. The video was originally issued in Spanish and is now also available in Brazilian Portuguese.
40 | Feerick Center for Social Justice Biennial Report 2018–2020
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