Faculty Feature: Professor Holly S. Cooper

Co-director of the UC Davis Immigration Law Clinic and King Hall alumna Holly S. Cooper ’98 is a nationally recognized expert on immigration detention issues and on the immigration consequences of criminal convictions. Both clients and King Hall students benefit from her extensive litigation experience defending the rights of immigrants. Since 1998, she has represented hundreds of clients in individual proceedings and has represented the interests of thousands of class members in class action litigations or enforcement of consent decrees.

The clinic represents immigrants in detention in federal court actions. By working with Cooper on complex federal immigration litigation and taking her course, students learn about the civil rights of immigrant prisoners and detainees and how to effectively advocate on their behalf. 

Cooper may be best known for her involvement in suing the U.S. government to protect the basic human rights of immigrant children who Border Patrol detained during the last Trump administration. The children, including infants, lacked adequate food, water, and sanitation — caring for each other when they became ill — and were held weeks beyond the 72-hour limit. More recently, Cooper and the clinic won the class action case, Lucas R. v. Azar. The case secured the right to procedural protections when the federal government drugs detained immigrant children. It also won procedural protections for disabled children and children who are in jail-like conditions, as well as greater protections for children to be released to family and increased access to lawyers. 

Cooper has served as an expert consultant to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for their reports on immigration detention conditions and the rights of immigrant detainees. She also provides expert legal advice for Kern and Santa Barbara County Public Defenders’ Offices.

Before joining the King Hall faculty in 2006, Cooper worked at the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project in Florence, Arizona. At the Florence Project, Cooper started the Detained Immigrant Children’s Rights Project — the first friend of the court program for detained immigrant children — in collaboration with the Executive Office for Immigration Review. 

She has been a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (“AILA”) since 1999 and was appointed for two years to the AILA Liaison Committee to the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge and Board of Immigration Appeals. She also served for a full five-year tenure on the ABA’s Immigration Commission and served on the Immigration Committee under the Criminal Justice Section of the ABA for nearly a decade.

Her many honors include the 2020 Al Otro Lado Honey Badger Award For Tenacious Advocacy; 2019 UC Davis Distinguished Public Service Award; 2018 Woman of the Year for District 04, selected by Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry; 2018 Woman of the Year, selected by Congressman John Garamendi; 2017 Mexican American Concilio Community Award; 2017 Legal Services for Children’s Community Partner Award; 2017 Yolo County District Attorney’s Multi-Cultural Community Council Award; 2011 National Lawyers Guild Carol Weiss King Award; 2011 King Hall Legal Foundation Outstanding Alumni Award; and the 2007 UC Davis Immigration Clinic Alumni Council Public Interest Award. The UC Davis Immigration Law Clinic received State Senate recognition in 2016 and 2017.

What do you wish more people understood about immigration law?

There’s this rhetoric that goes around that they should have come the right way or the legal way. I don't think a lot of people realize that there really aren't any avenues for most people to immigrate. The right way can take between ten and twenty years. Or there's just no avenue at all. I don't think most people realize how narrow the pathways are that we have. And not only how narrow they are, but how completely inaccessible they are for an individual without a lawyer. I think that people really need to understand that there are hardworking people with deep roots in our communities that have been here most of their lives that just have no avenues. I don't think most of America realizes that.

What do you find rewarding about your work at the clinic?

I really love the clients and the students. To me, the best part of the job is working with students who are creative, innovative and always bringing new energy to immigration and law and to our clients. And then the clients themselves are just super dynamic, intelligent, fun, and just really involved in their own cases. It's really those two things that make my job great.

What originally drew you to the law and specifically to immigration law?

I think I always wanted to be a veterinarian or a doctor. I started volunteering in the ’80s and early ’90s with people who were fleeing the wars in Central America. Because I spoke Spanish, they asked me to draft people's stories for them to attach to their asylum applications. At least three days a week, I would go and volunteer and write up people's stories. The lawyer said, you know, you're really good at telling people’s stories. I hadn’t ever thought I'd have the gift for this. But I think it was just hearing what people were saying and being able to put that on paper in a really persuasive way that made me realize, maybe this is where I'm meant to be rather than in the medical field. Because I think people have stories that need to be told and to be told well. That was something I really loved doing, working with people to tell their stories to some kind of adjudicatory body.

And then me personally — no one really knows why you're drawn to certain things, but I think, reflecting, it has to do with my own family migrating here, on both sides. There were certain refugee stories, on both sides of my family. I think, in hindsight, having been told these stories over and over again, about how they fled from persecution and my grandfather’s family was so poor that, to feed him, they actually had to put him in an orphanage. Knowing that my grandfather, when he was growing up, he didn't get the chance to go to school. At seven years old, he started working and worked all the way until he was 80. He was the longest employee ever at his company.

Whereas they had the privilege of becoming citizens just through a one-page application. I've pulled up the one-page application where my grandfather put his name and date of birth, and he went from being undocumented to becoming a citizen. That's incomprehensible now. It was just stamped by somebody, and that was in the 1940s. I think it's recognizing that most immigrants, even with my family, they're hardworking. A lot of them are completely exploited and live in dire circumstances just on this dream of hope. I feel that I have an obligation, both because of my own family and just as a human being, to make sure people can have dignity in their lives. And one modicum of dignity that we can give people is to have civil legal status in a country.

What would your students be surprised to learn about you?

Some people may be surprised to learn that I like to paint murals. Sometimes I do political art for protests, and I really love it. It’s mainly protest signs and stuff like that. Some of my art has been on the news. At one point, it was on the front page of the Sacramento Bee, when they covered a protest.

Do you have any other hobbies?

I love nature. I love hiking. I'm a pretty avid gardener. And I like to write. I like weightlifting. I love cooking.

Of what are you proudest?

I would say my children. I'm really proud of my children and just the fact that we made it through the pandemic. They both seem to be doing relatively well, and raising two kids through the pandemic, and also having a full-time job, was not easy.

Do you have one piece of advice for King Hall law students?

One of the things that I've learned in my career — and maybe I'm not always perfect at this — is that being kind to people, even when there's disagreement or even when you're tired and maybe this person is getting on your nerves, that kindness will pay itself back. In a practical sense, the person sitting next to you will one day be a District Attorney maybe, and you're trying to get a good plea bargain for your client. Or they're going to be a judge in your case. And then there's also the networking that you can do with people if they remember that you were good to them. It could be that you need to get your client some sort of benefit or maybe I’m trying to leverage a job for one of my students.

There are just so many things that can happen when you create an environment around you that people remember that you made them feel good, you made them not feel ashamed. I don't think people realize how much the power dynamic can work against you when you're not kind, because you will see everybody in court, you will see them having power over you and, more importantly, having power over your client. I think in an academic environment, it's really easy to be petty and maybe do things you regret. But I think that really trying to live a life that you're proud of will pay itself forward, and I think the most important beneficiaries of that are your clients.

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