Becky Wolozin joined the Legal Aid Justice Center in September 2015 as an Equal Justice Works Fellow with the JustChildren program. Now Becky is a Senior Supervising attorney with the Immigrant Advocacy Program and directs the George Mason Law School Immigration Litigation Clinic. Becky primarily works advocating for immigrant children and families in immigration and civil rights cases. Becky is a graduate of Cornell University, Harvard Law School, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She focused her graduate work on immigration law, education law, and child development.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: August 27, 2019
Media Contacts:
Kathleen Corcoran
kcorcoran6@gmu.edu
(703)993-8332

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg
simon@justice4all.org
(703) 778-3450

The Legal Aid Justice Center and George Masin University’s Antonin Scalia Law School Announce New Immigration Clinic

Arlington, VA — The Legal Aid Justice Center (LACJ) today announced a new immigration litigation clinic at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. The clinic, which launches this fall offers students the opportunity to gain translatable skills and valuable perspectives on immigration law, specifically the deportation process and habeas corpus litigation.

The Immigration Litigation Clinic director is Becky Wolozin, a graduate of Harvard Law School, who started her career at LAJC in the JustChildren program, focusing on the intersection of child advocacy and immigration.

“I am thrilled this clinic will be offered at Scalia Law School.  Clinical work represents such a formative experience in law school, and it is an honor and a pleasure to be a part of that for young law students at the beginning of their legal careers,” said Ms. Wolozin.  “Not only will the students in this clinic get incredible legal experience, they will also gain important and profound human experience helping those fighting for the right to exist and to be together with their families.”

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, the Legal Director of the Immigrant Advocacy program at LAJC and co-teacher of the clinic, said “Through this clinic, law students will have the opportunity to represent clients, hone their litigation skills, learn a complicated area of law, and have an impact on some of the most important issues affecting millions of people across the nation.”

This clinic is made possible through a gift from Leonard A. Bennett, a 1989 graduate of George Mason University and a 1994 graduate of the George Mason School of Law.  A trial attorney and consumer advocate since 1994, Bennett works for Consumer Litigation Associates in Newport News, Virginia, and is often quoted in the New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post.

“I am so grateful to Len Bennett for his generous gift, making the new Immigration Litigation Clinic possible, said Dean Henry N. Butler.  “Len’s philanthropy will profoundly impact our students and the clients they serve.”

“I also want to thank the Legal Aid Justice Center for partnering with Scalia Law to give our students first-hand experience advocating for immigrant families.  We are proud to educate students who will become lawyer committed to justice for all,” Dean Butler concluded.

About George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School
In July 2016, the George Mason University School of Law was renamed Antonin Scalia Law School in honor of the late Supreme Court Justice.  Scalia Law is renowned for its academic emphasis on the the intersection of law and economics, with some of the nation’s top law and economic scholars on the faculty.  National Jurist ranks Scalia Law as a Top 20 Law School for students pursuing careers in government.  A relatively young law school, Scalia Law School has been ranked a US News Top 50 Law School for 18 years, and recently ranked #4 for its part-time program.  Scalia Law School is ranked #19 by Shanghai’s Global Rankings for Law.  National Jurist ranks Washington DC, across the Potomac from Scalia Law School, the best city in the nation for young attorneys.

About the Legal Aid Justice Center
The Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC) fights injustice in the lives of individual Virginians while rooting out exploitative policies and practices that keep people in poverty.  LAJC uses impact litigation, community organizing, and policy advocacy to solve urgent problems in areas such as housing, education, civil rights, workers’ rights, immigration, healthcare and consumer finance.  LAJC also offers clinics at the University of Virginia Law School and the University of Richmond Law School.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Becky Wolozin, Attorney, 703-720-5606, becky@justice4all.org
Tim Wallace, Dir. of Development, 434-529-1853, twallace@justice4all.org

4^th Circuit decision on ICE transfers upholds court oversight but fails families

Falls Church, Va., April 16, 2019 — Today the 4th Circuit issued a decision in Reyna v. Hott, a case challenging ICE’s practice of transferring detained parents across the country and far away from their children and families. In an important win for immigration advocates, the Court unequivocally held that it had the power to hear cases challenging the way ICE transfers detainees to different detention centers. This important holding will allow advocates to continue to challenge unlawful and harmful ICE practices.

However, the Court affirmed the lower court’s dismissal of the case, failing to recognize a right to family unity for detained immigrants and their U.S. citizen children. In Virginia, the majority of immigrants that are detained by ICE have been living in the United States and many have families and US Citizen or Legal Permanent Resident children who also live in Virginia. Nonetheless, ICE transfers these detained parents across the country with no consideration of the needs of their children to visit their parents, or their own rights as parents to provide care and nurture to their children through in-person visits during the traumatic period of detention.

“While we are happy the court recognized its power to hold the government accountable for its arbitrary and punitive transfer practices, we are disappointed that the 4th circuit failed to recognize the importance of family unity in the context of detainee transfers. The parent-child relationship is not an on-off switch, and being able to visit their parents in person while their parents are detained is important to mitigate the harm done by the fact of detention,” says Becky Wolozin, attorney with the Legal Aid Justice Center. “Instead, the 4th Circuit declined to provide relief for parents detained at great distances from their children, making in person visitation impossible causing exponential harm to the child and to the parent-child relationship.”

Fourth Circuit Opinion (PDF)

Background:
Reyna v. Hott was a lawsuit attempting to require ICE to consider the interests of the parent and the child in providing care and nurture through in-person visits before transferring parents far away from their families. The claim was based on a violation of due process because the government is unlawfully infringing on the liberty interest in family unity (held by both the parent and the child in the 4th circuit). The Plaintiffs contended that ICE was infringing on this interest because they did not provide notice or an opportunity for the parent or child to be heard regarding the harm that transfer of the parent would cause the child or the parent-child relationship.

The district court granted the government’s motion to dismiss because the judge found that the harm was done by the fact of detention, and that there was no further harm done by transferring parents great distances from where there children live, thereby essentially preventing visitation between parents and children.

Legal Aid Justice Center brought the case with the support of CapitalOne pro bono counsel.

About the Legal Aid Justice Center
The Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC) fights injustice in the lives of individual Virginians while rooting out exploitative policies and practices that keep people in poverty. LAJC uses impact litigation, community organizing, and policy advocacy to solve urgent problems in areas such as housing, education, civil rights, immigration, healthcare, workers’ rights, and consumer finance. LAJC’s primary service areas are Charlottesville, Northern Virginia, Richmond and Petersburg, but the effects of their work are felt statewide.  www.justice4all.org

About CaptialOne
Capital One Financial Corporation is headquartered in McLean, Virginia. Its subsidiaries, Capital One, N.A. and Capital One Bank (USA), N. A., offer a broad spectrum of financial products and services to consumers, small businesses and commercial clients. We apply the same principles of innovation, collaboration and empowerment in our commitment to our communities across the country that we do in our business. We recognize that helping to build strong and healthy communities – good places to work, good places to do business and good places to raise families – benefits us all and we are proud to support this and other community initiatives. www.capitaloneinvestingforgood.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts:      Rebecca Wolozin, (571) 373-0518
                  Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, (434) 218-9376

FEDERAL COURT ALLOWS CHALLENGE TO GOVERNMENT POLICY USING DETAINED CHILDREN AS BAIT TO ARREST FAMILIES

ALEXANDRIA, VA (November 16, 2018) — Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia denied the U.S. government’s motion to dismiss Legal Aid Justice Center’s lawsuit on behalf of detained immigrant children and their families, striking a blow to a new immigration policy that has kept thousands of children unnecessarily detained for months. The Court’s decision is a victory for immigrant children and their families in Virginia and across the country. 

This case is particularly significant, not only in Virginia, but nationally. Over 13,000 children are held by Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) under the policies challenged in this suit, hundreds of whom are in Virginia. Because the policies are federal policies implemented across the country, the outcome of this case will have a nationwide impact. 

Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC), together with the intellectual property law firm of Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein, and Fox, brought this first-of-its-kind class action lawsuit challenging the government’s recent policy of sharing sponsor information and information about sponsors’ household members with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That policy has resulted in ICE arrests of family and friends that came forward to bring their children home.

“The Trump administration has been carrying out a backdoor family separation agenda, keeping immigrant children apart from their families and using children as bait to break up the very families they have traveled so far and risked so much to join,” said Becky Wolozin, lead counsel and attorney with LAJC’s Immigrant Advocacy Program. “This decision is a victory for immigrant children and families. The Court has said clearly that the government cannot run roughshod over the rights of these children and their loved ones.” 

The lawsuit stemmed from the experience of four children in ORR custody on Virginia who were held by the government for over five months while their relatives tried to bring them home. Three of the four children were finally reunified with their families – one just weeks before the Court’s order came down. The three children who have been reunified with their families have been dismissed from the case. One child remains in government custody, where he has been held apart from his adult sister for six months, after fleeing violence and neglect in his home country. 

“For years, ORR has neglected its obligations under the Administrative Procedure Act,” said Sterne Kessler Director Salvador Bezos, lead of the firm’s immigration-focused pro bono matters. “The Administrative Procedure Act provides essential protections against this kind of agency overreach. I am proud of my colleagues’ and LAJC’s efforts to force the government to meet its obligations to the children in its custody.”

“ORR is supposed to protect vulnerable immigrant children. Instead it is placing them in harm’s way under the guise of child welfare,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Legal Director of LAJC’s Immigrant Advocacy Program. “Their policy and its enforcement undermine successfully placing children with their families and the vast surveillance actions are destabilizing immigrant communities.” 

In the November 15th ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema firmly upheld children’s right to liberty and the right to family unity for immigrant families. Judge Brinkema found that the children and their sponsors provided sufficient reason to suggest that their constitutional rights were violated, and that the government violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it enacted its ICE sharing policy earlier this year.  The case will now move forward as LAJC works to certify the class and the parties work to complete discovery. 

Read the legal ruling here. 

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Legal Aid Justice Center is a statewide Virginia nonprofit organization whose mission is to strengthen the voices of low-income communities and root out the inequities that keep people in poverty. We provide legal support to immigrant communities facing legal crises and use advocacy and impact litigation to fight back against ICE enforcement and detention abuses.  More information is available at http://www.justice4all.org/current-initiatives/fighting-family-separation/

CONTACT:
Becky Wolozin
Attorney, Legal Aid Justice Center
703-720-5606 | becky@justice4all.org

Falls Church, Virginia (January 8, 2018) – In response to growing school enrollment barriers faced by immigrant students across Virginia, the Legal Aid Justice Center has released a practice guide, Dream Big: Education for Immigrant Students and Children of Immigrants. The guide clarifies the responsibilities of the Commonwealth’s school divisions to provide tuition-free education to all students, regardless of immigration status. It also outlines general school enrollment principles under Virginia law and answers common questions faced by attorneys and service providers who are assisting immigrant families.

“Virginia schools should be welcoming, supportive, and safe places for all students,” said Becky Wolozin, an attorney with the Legal Aid Justice Center and author of the practice guide. “Unfortunately, immigrant children and children who have immigrant parents often face unnecessary barriers to enrolling in school and obtaining the services they need to learn. We hope this guide will assist advocates in using state and federal protections to ensure that all children in Virginia have the opportunity to learn.”

The guide addresses some of the most common barriers to school enrollment faced by immigrant children, including unnecessary and onerous enrollment documentation requirements and family instability due to deportation. Using a question and answer format, the guide clarifies school division responsibilities to immigrant students and families. State and federal law protect the right of all children to attend public school, regardless of immigration status. 

Resources

Dream Big: Education for Immigrant Students and Children of Immigrants