King Hall hosts Immigration Justice Initiative in collaboration with law faculty, students from Chile

This month, UC Davis School of Law welcomed five visiting students and three professors from Pontifica Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC) in Santiago for a special program called the Immigration Justice Initiative. During this three-week program, the students took in special seminars with King Hall faculty and guest speakers, engaged in a number of academic field trips and gained practical knowledge from their UC Davis Immigration Law Clinic colleagues.

Professor Tomas Greene Pinochet of the Immigration Legal Clinic at the Law School of PUC originally was a Visiting Scholar to UC Davis School of Law last winter. That experience inspired him to share the national expertise of King Hall’s Immigration Law Clinic more broadly with his own clinic students, who will soon become teaching assistants. Professor Greene was accompanied on his return trip by Professor Eleonora López Contreras, a sociologist who co-teaches courses in the context of immigration at the Law School at PUC, and Assistant Professor Martín Canessa Zamora, as well as the five students.

Working with Immigration Clinic Law Co-Director Holly Cooper, Clinical Fellow J.J. Mulligan Sepúlveda and Associate Dean of International Programs Beth Greenwood created a unique academic and cultural experience for the group.  The program included a group conversation with Dean Kevin Johnson, a national authority on U.S. immigration and constitutional law.

Special topics included the detention of children, the Flores settlement, constitutional law issues in immigration from a common law perspective (Chile is a civil law country), as well as practical approaches to streamlining  immigration casework. The students themselves presented on current issues in the PUC clinic to the UC Davis clinic students, a unique comparative experience for all.