MoProBono - Spring 2018 Update

10 MoProBono Spring 2018 The new administration has introduced numerous proposals and issued several executive orders that would significantly alter federal immigration policy. Our lawyers have responded with vigor to these proposed changes, staffing clinics to help people apply for legal status, preparing amicus briefs, and continuing to seek asylum for people threatened by persecution in their home countries. Our work in this area is wide and deep and addresses many of the most pressing (and unique) aspects of the current immigration conversation, including the “travel ban,” sanctuary cities, and asylum seekers. Here are some highlights. • Between February 2017 and March 2018, our teams filed eight amicus briefs in federal district courts, circuit courts of appeal, and the U.S. Supreme Court representing dozens of religious and interreligious organizations opposing successive versions of the January 2017 travel ban that sought to bar refugees from around the world, as well as immigrants from a number of predominantly Muslim nations, from entering the United States. These briefs expressed the religious groups’ deep concerns about the refugee ban, based on their work with refugees and the universal commands central to all of their faiths requiring a welcome to the stranger and assistance to those in need. The briefs also raised the ban’s harm to religious freedom. Several courts have ruled that such a ban embodies religious discrimination and undermines the principle that the government must not favor or disfavor any religion. The Supreme Court is now considering a challenge to the travel ban. Marc Hearron, Joe Palmore, and Sophia Brill in the Appellate Group led the effort, along with Purvi Patel in Los Angeles; Sandeep Nandivada in Washington, D.C.; and Amanda Aikman and senior pro bono counsel Jennifer Brown in New York. • California lawyers represented a number of religious entities with amicus briefs to California federal courts opposing the threatened cut- off of funding to “sanctuary cities” — the loosely defined term applied to jurisdictions that limit the involvement of local law enforcement officials in implementing federal immigration law. The briefs demonstrated amici’s first- IMMIGRATION ASSISTANCE Our work in [immigration assistance] is wide and deep and addresses many of the most pressing (and unique) aspects of the current immigration conversation, including the travel ban, sanctuary cities, and asylum seekers.