Lawyering Over the Line:* Teaching Crisis Lawyering With Law Students Serving Asylum Seekers in Mexico

LAWYERING OVER THE LINE:

*

TEACHING

CRISIS LAWYERING WITH LAW STUDENTS

SERVING ASYLUM SEEKERS IN MEXICO

KAYLEEN HARTMAN†

For several years now, a humanitarian crisis has been building on the U.S.

southern border, where northern-bound migrants—primarily family units and

children—confront increasingly dire circumstances to seek safety in the United

States. Restrictive and erratic asylum policy has resulted in ever-rising legal hur-

dles that families and individuals must surmount, even before they arrive in the

United States. In response to this, American lawyers and law students have been

“crossing the Line,” and going over the southern border and into Mexico to pro-

vide legal services. Though the exceptional setting presents diff‌icult issues of sub-

stantive law, professional responsibility, and pedagogical method, it has received

little to no academic attention as a practical educational experience. Lawyering

Over the Line provides an overview of the current opportunity to conduct this

work through U.S. law schools, and analyzes the value of this work to clients, law

students, and law schools. This work shares much of the traditional pedagogical

value found in service-learning work as developed in previous scholarship, along

with many of the challenges and learning opportunities of experiential learning

work performed in family detention centers. The stressors of the border experience

described in this article highlight in new ways important aspects of more tradi-

tional service-learning work. Undertaking this work in Mexico is unique, however,

because of the acute nature of the challenges encountered in work across interna-

tional borders. The disorienting, liminal space students share with clients in

* “The Line,” or “la linea” in Spanish, is a colloquial phrase commonly used by migrants to refer to

the U.S.-Mexico border.

† J.D. Georgetown Law. Adjunct Professor of Law at the Loyola Immigrant Justice Clinic at Loyola

Law School. The author thanks colleagues Sameer Ashar, Carmia Caesar, Lindsay Harris, Julia

Hernandez, Elizabeth Keyes, Kathleen Kim, Ragini Shah, and Danielle Tully, for their thoughtful review,

comments, and advice. I am also indebted to Loyola Law student Leila Duntley, for her thorough research

and assistance. Special thanks go to Meghan Maurus, formerly of the Border Rights Project with Al Otro

Lado, as well as Nicole Ramos, Maya Ibars, all of the Al Otro Lado attorneys, and the entire Al Otro Lado

Border Rights team of staff and volunteers. Their tireless collective work on behalf of migrants makes

this work and this article possible. A debt is owed, as well, to the many law professors and law students

who took the time to share their wisdom and experience, whether through survey responses or one-on-one

interviews. This article benef‌itted from the collegial wisdom and insight provided at both the Clinical

Law Review Writers’ Workshop as well as the Emerging Immigration Scholars Conference. The author

extends a debt of gratitude to my institution, Loyola Law School, for supporting the transnational work of

the Loyola Immigrant Justice Clinic, and for opening up the path for scholarship in the midst of an urgent

legal immigration landscape with pressing client and student needs. All errors and omissions are my own.

© 2021, Kayleen Hartman.

47

transit, when thoughtfully combined with this form of service-learning has, the

potential to be radically transformative for law students in their development as

lifelong practitioners in public interest and other f‌ields.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

II. WHAT IS HAPPENING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LINE?.......... 52

A. Who Are the Clients, and Why Are They on the Other Side of

the Line? .................................... 53

B. What Law Students Are Doing Over the Line . . . . . . . . . . . 56

III. WHY TAKE LAW STUDENTS OVER THE LINE?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

A. The Transformative Value of Crossing into, Inhabiting, and

Returning from the Liminal Space of the Line.. ........ 61

1. The Physical Experience of the Border’s Liminal Space 62

2. Counseling Clients with Little Relief Who are Still on

the Other Side of the Line. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

3. The Global Perspective on Migration Made Available

Over the Line.............................. 67

4. Crossing the Line into a New Identity as Lawyer . . . . . 71

5. Crossing the Line Over to the Other Side of Suffering

and Secondary Trauma....................... 73

6. What Returning from the Border’s Liminal Space Has

to Teach About Crossing the Line............... 75

B. The Traditional Pedagogical Value of Working Over the

Line ........................................ 76

1. Unique Value of Law Students ................. 77

2. “Bite-Sized” Nature and Subject Matter of Casework . 77

3. Skills Development: Client Skills............... 78

4. Skills Development: General Practice Skills. . . . . . . . 80

C. Challenges and Pedagogical Disadvantages to Crossing the

Line ........................................ 82

IV. BEST PRACTICES FOR GOING OVER THE LINE ........ ......... 87

A. The Service-Learning Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

B. Student Selection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

48 GEORGETOWN IMMIGRATION LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 35:47

C. Student Preparation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

D. Structured Ref‌lection...................... ..... 92

E. Best Practices on Return.... ..................... 96

V. CONCLUSION ...................................... 97

APPENDIX A: LAW SCHOOL LIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

APPENDIX B: LOGISTICAL BEST PRACTICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

A. Before the Trip ................................ 103

B. During the Trip ............................... 105

C. Returning from Mexico .......................... 110

I. INTRODUCTION

Since at least 2014, media reports have told the story of a “surge” of

individuals—most from the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador,

Guatemala, and Honduras—arriving at the Southern border of the United

States in search of refuge.

1

Many of those reports describe the situation at the border as a “crisis.”

2

While those trends have f‌luctuated in recent years, the narrative surrounding

large numbers of arrivals has re-emerged,

3

and is once again framed as a

1. See Alan Greenblatt, What’s Causing The Latest Immigration Crisis? A Brief Explainer, NPR (July 9,

2014), npr.org/2014/07/09/329848538/whats-causing-the-latest-immigration-crisis-a-brief-explainer; Underage

and On the Move: A Wave of Unaccompanied Children Swamps the Debate over Immigration, ECONOMIST

(June 26, 2014), https://www.economist.com/brief‌ing/2014/06/26/under-age-and-on-the-move; Alan Gomez,

Children from Central America f‌lood U.S. border—again, USA TODAY, (Sept. 23, 2016), https://www.usatoday.

com/story/news/nation/2016/09/23/unaccompanied-minors-central-america-rushing-across-us-border/90911644/;

Julie Hirschfeld Davis & Michael D. Shear, 57,000 Reasons Immigration Overhaul May Be Stalled for Now,

N.Y. TIMES (July 16, 2014), https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/us/politics/border-crisis-casts-shadow-over-

obamas-immigration-plan.html; David Nakamura, Flow of Central Americans to U.S. surging, expected to

exceed 2014 numbers, WASH. POST (Sept. 22, 2016), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/f‌low-of-central-

americans-to-us-surging-expected-to-exceed-2014-numbers/2016/09/22/ee127578-80da-11e6-8327-

f141a7beb626_story.html.

2. Id.

3. This article was drafted and accepted for publication prior to the global pandemic caused by the

novel coronavirus identif‌ied as COVID-19. Since then, the Trump administration has virtually halted the

entry of asylum seekers into the U.S. at the southern border by order of the Center for Disease Control,

instead subjecting asylum seekers to a shadowy process of “expulsion” without analysis of their asylum

claims. See Control of Communicable Diseases; Foreign Quarantine: Suspension of Introduction of

Persons Into United States From Designated Foreign Countries or Places for Public Health Purposes, 85

Fed. Reg. 16559 (Mar. 24, 2020) (to be codif‌ied at 42 C.F.R. pt. 71). As a result, most of the legal proc-

esses as described in this article have been suspended entirely for the duration of the pandemic. For an

excellent discussion of the CDC’s measures and their legality, please see the May 12, 2020 episode of

Professor Alex Aleinikoff’s podcast, “Tempest Tossed.” Alex Aleinikoff, The power of the President and

the human rights of migrants in the midst of the pandemic: Two Conversations,” TEMPEST TOSSED (May

12, 2020), https://tempesttossed.libsyn.com/the-power-of-the-president-and-the-human-rights-of-migrants-in-

the-midst-of-the-pandemic-two-conversations.

2020] LAWYERING OVER THE LINE 49