Law Clinic Protects Immigrants From Detention And Deportation Despite Challenges

The clinic has helped thousands of immigrants in desperate need of legal representation against detention and deportation since 2004. It also helps people who face a myriad of issues ranging from homelessness, mental illness and disease.

Camille Orquera / Staff Writer 

The coronavirus pandemic and White House immigration policies have caused difficulty for FIU’s Carlos A. Costa Immigration and Human Rights Law Clinic to represent some of its clients.

The clinic has helped thousands of immigrants in desperate need of legal representation against detention and deportation since 2004. It also helps people who face a myriad of issues ranging from homelessness, mental illness and disease. 

Juan Carlos Gómez has been its director since 2010 and has 30 years of immigration law experience to provide justice for people whose cases are not normally represented. 

The clinic faces challenges to remotely communicate with some of its clients due to their distinctive situations in the pandemic.

“Someone said to me, ‘Well, you can meet your clients over Zoom or Facetime.’ I have clients who are homeless,” Gómez said. “One of my clients lives under an overpass on the Palmetto and he’s a paranoid schizophrenic. The reality is that he doesn’t have Wi-Fi or technology to contact me.” 

Gómez said that most of the clinic’s clients tend to be very poor and normally would not be able to afford an attorney. Many of the clients are also mentally ill people whose rights are being violated or have faced domestic persecution in their home countries. 

Each semester at FIU, law students and volunteer Master of Law graduates help the clinic to take on hundreds of appeals, asylum cases and naturalization cases, including cases related to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy. 

“Our students are able to provide actual effective legal assistance,” said Gómez. “We’re just asking for fairness and justice. That’s all we ask and that’s all we aim to teach.” 

The clinic continues to work and actively help their clients to get through the arduous legal proceedings that have partly been hindered by the Trump administration. 

“The President’s domestic policy advisor Stephen Miller and [Attorney General] William Barr have made the immigration process very difficult and it is quite unfair. For example, they’ve made these new asylum regulations that if a judge thinks that there is no basis for your asylum, then you could be barred for life and that’s just wrong…They’re punishing people. I try to keep my clients here, free and then try to find a solution for them. I believe this government is reprehensible in what it’s done and continues to do,” said Gómez.

Gómez said that the Trump administration continuously villanizes immigrants and their attempts to live inside the United States.

“They have built a virtual wall rather than a physical wall. They have paralyzed a good portion of the immigration system to achieve their xenophobic goals,” he said. “The administration has made it incredibly difficult to immigrate to the United States and punish those who come here.”

Gómez and his family were refugees in the Freedom Flights operation, in which nearly 300 thousand Cubans relocated to the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s. He later graduated from FIU and the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. 

An immigrant himself, Gómez said that he gets upset when he sees fellow immigrants supporting the Trump administration’s current immigration laws and regulations.  

“What breaks my heart is when other immigrants claim that they are without sin because they have never done anything wrong to support this persecution of immigrants,” he said. 

Regardless of the obstacles that the clinic often faces, Gómez said that he is proud of the students who take part in the clinic and their success in the legal cases.

Several years ago, the clinic took on the case of a man facing an unlawful deportation as the Immigration and Customs Department’s (ICE) had deemed him a recent arrival from Mexico. 

“It turned out this man had been in the United States since the 1980s and was a permanent resident. It was one of our students who figured out who this man actually was and his actual residency status,” he said.

The clinic gives FIU students the opportunity to practice law and provide justice to immigrants that are often overlooked.  

“It’s misguided to not see that immigrants are just like we are. Our students are able to give dignity and hope to people who are seen as numbers,” Gómez said.

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