Immigration Clinic Victory Highlighted in KQED Report

San Francisco public radio station KQED reported on the case of UC Davis Immigration Law Clinic client Pablo Aguilar, who was released after more than two years in immigration detention thanks to the efforts of Holly S. Cooper ’98, Co-director of the UC Davis School of Law Immigration Law Clinic, Carter "Cappy" White, supervising attorney of the UC Davis School of Law Civil Rights Clinic, and numerous clinic students. Aguilar, a teenaged undocumented immigrant, left his home in El Salvador to escape death threats. 

Cooper and White served as co-counsel on his case.  Immigration Clinic students filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus and a motion for preliminary injunction.  Aldo Martinez Gomez ’17, Mike Benassini ’18, and Eduardo Osorio ’18 argued the case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of  California, and others including Marine Papillaud ’18, Hope Alley ’16, Andrea Gonzales ’16, Lesley Sedano ’17, Masao Ito Taylor ’17, and Sadie Weller ’17 also worked on the case.

In the KQED report, Professor White comments on Aguilar’s long detention, which occurred despite federal laws that require that immigrant minors be allowed to live in the least restrictive detention setting possible.

“We don’t know exactly how many cases there are like this, but in this case the government was pretending that it was a better parent than the parent that was out there,” said White.