Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights

Program Overview

The Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic (INRC), formerly (and still formally, for now) the "Immigrant & Refugee Rights Clinic", represents and supports non-citizens in a variety of settings and courts, covering immigration issues, law and security, and gender violence.

Non-citizens have complicated relationships with law and government in the United States. Throughout U.S. history, immigration, both regulated and unregulated, has been one of the foundations of economic and cultural development. It holds equally true that immigrants and non-citizens are commonly targeted as scapegoats by authorities during times of real and illusory threat to U.S. national and economic security. For instance, law becomes the instrument by which immigrants are deported and exploited, families are split, and communities of color, particularly, are subject to subordination. As a result, workers fear reporting abuses by supervisors and battered women are afraid to call the police. It is also in the name of national security and under cover of legal authority that non-citizens are abused and indefinitely imprisoned without charge or process at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, and other U.S. sites, secret or known. The INRC assists non-citizens--either through individual legal representation or as groups and organizations--as they assert their rights to live in the United States without fear, exploitation and subordination, or to be free from U.S. custody. By supporting and representing non-citizens, we aim to train law students to become thoughtful, principled, skilled and committed public interest lawyers.

The INRC was one of the first immigration law clinics in the nation and has a distinguished record of litigation and advocacy in support of communities and their organizations. Current faculty have practice backgrounds and scholarly interests in the following areas: asylum and immigration law, immigration consequences of criminal legal issues, immigrant workers' rights, gender violence and the Violence Against Women Act, and "national security" law and issues.

INRC attempts to evolve constantly to meet community need and because we wish to model a practice of law that is flexible rather than fixed. Most of the cases on our docket are selected strategically to test or develop an area of law. In recent terms, INRC students have represented legal permanent residents with criminal convictions, domestic violence survivors and asylum-seekers in deportation proceedings. Students have also represented prisoners of various nationalities presently or formerly held at American military facilities at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, and at other detention sites worldwide, in federal district and appellate courts and before military commissions. INRC members also continue to support immigrant community organizations and labor groups in non-litigation advocacy, organizing, and awareness raising, including know-your-rights trainings.

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Latest News

Immigrant and Refugee Rights Clinic Student Suha Dabbouseh Discusses Protests at Guantánamo

January 27, 2011

Marking the ninth anniversary of the U.S. military prison camp's opening, most of the remaining prisoners in Camps 5 and 6 at Guantánamo have joined together to peacefully protest their indefinite imprisonment with a sit-in and... More »

CUNY Law Clinic Represents Bagram Detainee in Precedent-Setting D.C. Circuit Case

January 6, 2010

On January 7th, the D.C Circuit will hear oral argument in the first legal challenge on behalf of detainees at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan. CUNY Law's Immigrant & Refugee Rights Clinic and Yale Law School's Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic represent Amin al-Bakri, a citizen of Yemen who was disappeared by the U.S. in 2002, and has been imprisoned at Bagram since 2003 without charges or access to an attorney... More »