Access to a Doctor, Access to Justice? An Empirical Study on the Impact of Forensic Medical Examinations in Preventing Deportations

Nermeen Arastu’s article “Access to a Doctor, Access to Justice? An Empirical Study on the Impact of Forensic Medical Examinations in Preventing Deportations” is published in the Harvard Human Rights Journal. The article asks if adjudicators hold immigrants to unrealistic evidentiary standards and constructively create norms requiring immigrants with temporary or no immigration status to gain access to health professionals with the requisite training, competencies, and capacity to evaluate them. Even when immigrants are able to corroborate their psychological and physical injuries with a medical affidavit, many lack access to a health professional who can identify, much less document, these injuries for an immigration adjudicator. To the extent such evaluations may be essential to the successful outcome of the legal case, lack of access to a medical professional may translate into lack of access to justice.