Clinical Professor of Law, Suffolk University
Over the past twenty years, I have directed a law school clinic focused on representing immigrants facing deportation. Over this time, the clinic's work has ranged from representing immigrants with criminal convictions, to people applying for asylum, to state and federal level advocacy with national immigrants' rights groups. In the past 7-10 years, I have increasingly incorporated support for community organizations into the clinic that has allowed students to explore what abolition means in the immigration context, and what it looks like to support that work as a lawyer. This work has led to more and more interaction with people who lack formal legal claims to immigration status but are organizing for change nonetheless. Those interactions informed the research for my forthcoming book, which explores migration from the perspective of communities of origin in Mexico and the relationship between the U.S. political economy and migration, immigration enforcement and remittance to development programs. Like the work in the U.S., the research in Mexico led me to organizing efforts that seek to improve conditions in Mexican communities, including two distinct indigenous communities, in different parts of Mexico.