PSJD Public Interest News Digest – August 24, 2018
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Hello there, interested public! In a relatively slow week (aside from ongoing immigration developments) I have one specific recommendation for you:
In Wired Magazine, Professor Susan Crawford of Harvard Law wrote about a recent event where “a hand-picked group of university presidents and provosts from across the country, plus a few university faculty members, met for two days at an estate-turned-conference center on Long Island to catalyze the intentional creation of a new academic field aimed at addressing precisely this gap in interdisciplinary opportunities. This new area, “public interest technology,” is still being defined; it encompasses designing public policy and laws with an awareness of how technology actually works, as well as ensuring that technology is being used to serve public values of fairness and equity.”
One more thing: PSJD is currently considering nominations for the 2018 Pro Bono Publico Award. If you know students at PSJD subscriber schools who have made outstanding pro bono contributions to their communities, please take a moment and let us know about their work. The deadline for nominations is 8/31.
See you around,
Sam
Immigration & Refugee Issues
- According to the San Diego Union Tribune, “[t]he Center for American Progress published ” the third in a series of surveys of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipients by UC San Diego professor Tom Wong, who worked as adviser to the White House under the Obama administration. Wong found that 55 percent of more than 1,000 DACA recipients surveyed said they think about being deported from the U.S. at least once per day.”
- In San Diego, CA, a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order preventing the federal government from forcibly deporting parents while their children’s asylum claims are pending.
- In Washington, DC, 29 parents filed a lawsuit alleging that the federal government acted improperly when it rejected asylum claims based on interviews conducted with confused and traumatized parents who had been separated from their children: “Lawyers representing their parents…claim it violates procedural safeguards set out for people fighting deportation…and violates their due process.”
- Insider NJ called attention to the DOJ’s recent practice of “disqualifying specific immigration judges with whom the Attorney General disagrees. Earlier this month, the National Association of Immigration Judges filed a grievance against the Department of Justice for removing Judge Steven A. Morely, who sits in Philadelphia, from 87 cases, because Sessions found fault with the way Judge Morely handled a case of an undocumented Guatemalan national who in 2014 entered as an unaccompanied 17-year-old.”
Disaster Aid
- In Santa Clara County, CA, as part of a legal brief filed in a lawsuit aimed at restoring ‘net neutrality’ “[t]he Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District says a communications vehicle it dispatched to the Mendocino Complex, the largest wildfire in California’s history, was rendered essentially useless after Verizon reduced data speeds to a fraction of what firefighters needed.”