Legal Internship - National Security and Immigrant Rights - Summer 2010
The ACLU of Southern California is soliciting applications from law students interested in working on national security and immigrant rights litigation for the summer of 2010. Our office does litigation at all levels of the judiciary, including immigration court, federal district court, Ninth Circuit, and Supreme Court. Interns will work closely with the three attorneys in our office who focus on national security and immigration-related issues: Ahilan T. Arulanantham (director of immigrants’ rights and national security), Jennie Pasquarella (staff attorney), and Jennifer Stark (EJW fellow).
Our Work on National Security & Immigrant Rights Issues
The ACLU/SC has been at the forefront of litigation on a number of immigrant rights and national security issues. Our docket currently addresses a range of issues, including prolonged immigration detention, immigration detention conditions, right to appointed counsel for immigration detainees and immigrants with mental disabilities, worksite immigration raids, illegal FBI surveillance of Muslim communities, constitutional challenges to the material support of terrorism laws, and the government’s outsourcing of torture and detention of terrorism suspects, including U.S. citizens, to foreign countries.
Among our most recent victories is a ruling from the 9th Circuit that our lawsuit on behalf of immigrants detained for more than six months without receiving a bond hearing can go forward as a class action. We also won a federal lawsuit barring the government from denying attorneys access to their clients after an immigration raid, and successfully litigated a motion to suppress evidence resulting from that raid in immigration court.
We are currently litigating three class actions. One involves the government’s practice of shuttling immigrant detainees between detention centers and a holding facility, where detainees were often deprived of legal access, were forced to sleep on the hard floor for days, and deprived of basic amenities, such as the ability to bath, access to water, and sanitary napkins. Another involves the government's policy of detaining immigrants for years without hearings, while the other involves a challenge to the government's policy of delaying naturalization for years because of inordinate backlogs in processing security checks.
In addition, we are litigating a case on behalf of a U.S. citizen detained by the United Arab Emirates at the behest of the U.S. government on terrorism grounds, a criminal prosecution of another U.S. citizen for providing “material support” to a designated terrorist organization, and a Freedom of Information Act case seeking FBI records concerning their surveillance of Muslim community groups. We also have some individual immigration cases, as well as a few cases involving the First Amendment, privacy, and other civil liberties issues.
We also engage in non-litigation activities, including community work with Muslim groups in Los Angeles, giving "Know Your Rights" presentations at mosques on a monthly basis, as well as outreach to immigrants in detention centers who do not have lawyers to help them fight their deportation cases or help them with detention-related issues.
Student Intern Responsibilities
Students typically spend most of their time conducting research and writing to assist us with litigation. They occasionally travel to the detention centers to meet our clients and assist with our community work where appropriate. We are particularly interested in people with language skills because of our work with immigrant communities. People who speak Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, or languages from South Asia (Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Tamil, etc.) would be especially helpful, but any second language could be handy. We also have a preference for second years, but routinely hire first years as well.
We make a concerted effort to ensure that students work on a diversity of projects and receive intensive supervision, including ample feedback on their writing. In addition, our office sponsors a weekly lecture series connecting law students with public interest practitioners, judges, and scholars doing a variety of human rights and civil rights work in Southern California.
Interested students should send a cover letter, resume, writing sample, and list of two or three references via e-mail to Jennie Pasquarella. No phone calls, please.
Applications will be considered on a rolling basis, so students are advised to apply as soon as possible.
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