BY: Communications | DATE: Nov 17, 2021

The Immigrant and Non-Citizen Rights Clinic (INRC) has long collaborated with the CUNY School of Medicine and other medical and social work providers to support INRC clients who are vulnerable to deportation, already in removal proceedings, or seeking benefits before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

Through this collaboration, law students and faculty collaborated to facilitate forensic medical evaluations, thorough physical and psychological assessments that can be used as evidence in immigration representation. Many seeking humanitarian protection in the U.S. must meet complex legal guidelines that generally require them to prove that they survived egregious past harms, fear future harm, or would suffer severe hardship, if they are returned. Forensic medical evaluations paint a larger picture for immigration decision-makers, helping to corroborate immigrants’ claims of past harms and address concerns about their memory and demeanor.

Observing the anecdotal benefits of medical-legal collaboration, co-principal investigator and INRC co-director Professor Nermeen Arastu collaborated with colleagues  at the School of Medicine and Public Health, and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR)  to complete a first-of-its-kind, cross-disciplinary study on the effect of forensic medical evaluations on the granting of immigration relief.

Analyzing over 2,584 cases of individuals who received forensic medical evaluations through the PHR Asylum Network, the study found that 81.6% of individuals who requested a forensic medical evaluation between 2008-2018 were granted immigration relief, compared to an estimated 42.4% of successful asylum applications overall during this same period. In fact, those who received a forensic medical evaluation saw far greater success than other similarly situated populations of represented and non-detained immigrants.

The findings have been published in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, “Impact of Forensic Medical Evaluations on Immigration Relief Grant Rates and Correlates of Outcomes in the United States.

“While U.S. law states that an immigrant’s credible, persuasive, and specific testimony alone is sufficient to justify an asylum grant, our study illustrates that adjudicators have come to expect asylum-seekers to furnish hard-to-get forensic medical evaluations. Yet most applicants ensnared in the U.S. immigration system do not have access to an attorney, much less a forensic medical evaluator,” said Professor Nermeen Arastu. “This study underscores the many ways in which the U.S. immigration system needs radical transformation that centers a trauma-informed approach and reduces disparities.”

In addition to the faculty researchers from Physicians for Human Rights, CUNY Law, CUNY School of Medicine, and CUNY School of Public Health, Christian Seno (current 3L) and Victoria Pilger (21) worked on a team with CUNY Med student counterparts as student research assistants on this phase of the research project.

 

“My involvement in this transdisciplinary project was illuminating in many ways,” said Seno. “I think it will be an important part of my practice to be cognizant of and sensitive to the role that trauma plays in our clients’ lives, both in their past experiences as well as in the present course of seeking legal relief.”

 

Additional findings include:

  • Access to forensic medical evaluations play a crucial and persuasive role as evidence in immigration proceedings, even though such additional evidence is not required by U.S. immigration law. The outsized impact of forensic medical evaluations raises questions about whether adjudicators are holding immigrants to overly stringent standards.
  • Guidelines need to be developed regarding the consistent use of forensic medical evidence in immigration cases.
  • There is an urgent need to expand the pool of trained evaluators to improve access to forensic medical evaluations.
  • The impact of forensic medical knowledge can be substantially enhanced by expanding medico-legal partnerships.
  • Adjudicators, attorneys, and policymakers need training on the effects of trauma on individuals seeking immigration relief.

These findings strengthen and expand prior evidence that forensic medical evaluations can have a substantial positive impact on an applicant’s immigration relief claim. A complementary law review article by Professor Arastu is forthcoming in the Harvard Human Rights Journal.