For the third year in a row, the firm is sending a large contingent of attorneys (seven of whom are partners) and paralegals to Dilley, Texas for a full week to provide pro bono legal services to the immigrant women and children who are detained in the South Texas Family Residential Center, a detention center for immigrant families.
Just like last year, the Fragomen team of 15 professionals will constitute the only volunteers on the ground for an entire week. They are traveling to Dilley on Sunday, October 22, for orientation, and will remain through the end of business on Friday, October 27.
Fragomen's efforts in Dilley are provided in conjunction with the Dilley Pro Bono Project, which is a partner in the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project established jointly by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC), the American Immigration Council, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), and the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
Attorneys who volunteer in Dilley prepare detained women for their credible fear interviews, which are a prerequisite to release from detention for detained asylum seekers at the border. They may also represent women in bond hearings, draft requests for review of negative credible fear decisions, and draft other types of motions and appeals. Paralegals assist attorneys in these activities and also serve as interpreters.
We have also had smaller groups and individual attorneys volunteer in Dilley on an ad hoc basis several times over the course of the nearly three years that the facility has been open. Before the facility opened in Dilley in early 2015, a number of Fragomen professionals volunteered at the makeshift detention facility in Artesia, New Mexico in 2014.
We congratulate this year's team of volunteers (listed below) and wish them well next week!
- Barbara Camacho (Pro Bono Counsel, New York)
- Samuel Chow (Associate, New York)
- Kirsten Corneliussen (Associate, Troy)
- Rómulo Guevara (Associate, Silicon Valley)
- Janet Henner (Partner, New York)
- Ethan Kaufman (Partner, New York)
- Alexandra LaCombe (Partner, Troy)
- Iris Lopez (AP2, New York)
- Julie Muniz (Partner, New York)
- Catherine Perez (AP2, New York)
- Jannette Sanchez (Associate, Chicago)
- Cynthia Shearn (Partner, Chicago)
- Hugh Thistlethwaite (Partner, New York)
- Michael Turansick (Partner, Chicago)
- Rebecca van Uitert (Associate, Chicago)