Over the past nearly two years, Willamette Law has focused its efforts on building out its immigration law offerings to directly meet the growing needs of the state of Oregon. Recently, the law school’s addition of an Immigration Law Clinic and new faculty prompted a shift in focus to ensuring that graduates would have opportunities to pursue careers in immigration law. Willamette Law is proud to announce our inaugural class of Oregon Immigrant Justice Fellows. In collaboration with Innovation Law Lab (ILL), Alondra Duran JD’23, Rodrigo Fernandez-Ortega JD’23, and Doug Valladares JD’23 were selected as the first ever class of fellows from Willamette. The Class of 2023 graduates all participated in Willamette Law’s Immigration Law Clinic, an experience that impacted their decisions to accept these post-graduate fellowships.
The fellows work at ILL, a nonprofit organization fighting for immigrant and refugee justice that is tasked with providing the management and clearinghouse services for Equity Corps of Oregon (ECO). Oregon Work Relief (OWR) funds the fellowship and universal representation through the ECO program to advance its mission of building resilient immigrant communities in Oregon. ECO is a collaborative of community-based organizations, nonprofits, and private attorneys who have joined together to provide free legal services to immigrant Oregonians. Through ECO, the fellows provide legal services directly in impacted immigrant communities. They are also opening the door for an enduring partnership between the Immigration Clinic, ILL, and ECO as well as future fellowship placements.
Now, more than ever, Oregon is in need of qualified attorneys to help serve the state’s most vulnerable populations, including the immigrant community. When Willamette Law relaunched its Immigration Law Clinic in the fall of 2022, Professor Beth Zilberman fully understood the significance of it being the only immigration law clinic in a state that has a huge demand for immigration attorneys. With this in mind, she knew that it was vital to make lasting connections with local immigration law firms, organizations and our new statewide publicly funded program alongside ensuring students had pathways to job placements after graduation in the areas where they would make the highest impact.
As the state recently made history with attorney licensure reform, ILL and the Immigration Clinic hope to grow the fellowship program and connect law school graduates with the tools to develop expertise as immigration advocates and secure permanent job placements throughout the state. In order to both stabilize and grow Willamette Law’s commitment to this goal, in the fall of 2023, Professor Sarah Purce joined the Immigration Clinic to expand these partnerships and offerings as part of her role directing the new Portland Immigration Initiative. A significant part of that initiative included making the Oregon Immigrant Justice Fellowships a reality for Duran, Fernandez-Ortega, and Valladares. Through a collaborative effort with ILL last year, Immigration Clinic students assisted ten low-income Oregonians who fled persecution in their home countries in filing their applications for asylum with the Portland Immigration Court or the San Francisco Asylum Office. As a result, students gained first-hand experience and skills representing asylum seekers in their immigration proceedings before the immigration court while also forging an ongoing relationship between the Immigration Clinic, ILL, and students.
Alison Coutifaris, Supervisory Senior Attorney at ILL, shares that “through this partnership, students not only increase access to justice for the community, but also build their legal and client skills to prepare them for practice after graduation.” The continued collaboration between the law school and ILL, alongside the Oregon Immigrant Justice Fellowships, will give law students the opportunity to invest in and provide critical direct legal services to the Oregon immigrant community. ILL hopes that current and future fellows develop into expert immigrant advocates, and serve as the next generation of immigration attorneys who will help meet the acute need for legal services in Oregon.
As for Willamette Law, Zilberman sees the relationship between the Immigration Clinic and OWR’s ECO Program alongside the fellowships as a particularly impactful and hands-on way of fostering law students to become zealous advocates for underserved members of the state. When she joined the law school, Zilberman’s primary goal was to develop students into advocates who are passionate about helping low income Oregonians. In particular, those who would otherwise would face the complex immigration system without representation. This is an important part of preparing students after graduation to fill in the holes in Oregonians’ access to legal service.
“These fellowships and the continued collaborative relationship with ECO/ILL creates a natural pathway for our clinical law program where students can both be exposed to highly critical work while also knowing that they can graduate, be employed, and make an immediate contribution,” Zilberman says.
The Importance of Universal Representation
In fact, the current and future fellows will significantly contribute particularly in light of Oregon being the only state at present to fund a universal representation for noncitizens of this scope. The aim of universal representation is to ensure that nobody at risk of deportation or civic exclusion in communities is without legal representation. Coutifaris shares that “in the United States, because deportation is classified as a civil rather than a criminal sanction, immigrants facing removal are not afforded appointed attorneys under the Sixth Amendment. As a result, less than 40% nationally are able to secure attorneys to represent them in deportation proceedings.” Given ECO’s goal of ending unjust deportations and ILL’s commitment, encouraging more law students to consider a career in immigration law is more important than ever. This approach to legal representation enhances the relevance of the work at Willamette Law’s Immigration Clinic.
Purce reflects that “universal representation is revolutionary, for someone in these often life or death situations to be able to pick up a phone and access the support they need will be life changing. Opportunities such as the fellowship and the Immigration Clinic will get our state a step closer to ensuring that each individual who is facing deportation or other immigration consequences has access to the support and services they need.” The state needs good, qualified attorneys who know how to approach immigration law, an area of law that is notoriously complex. Purce shares that “unless you have a personal experience or connection with immigration law, you may not have any knowledge of the intricacies. It truly touches every area of law but with, often, incredibly high stakes which is why I am especially motivated to help teach students about immigration law.” The complexities of immigration law and the demand for immigration attorneys makes the collaborative partnership with ECO/ILL and the resulting fellowships all the more important.
In fact, it was witnessing the dire need for legal representation across Oregon, particularly in rural areas, that inspired Fernandez-Ortega to consider the Oregon Immigrant Justice Fellowship. “What appealed to me about the fellowship was that I would get to learn from and be supervised by experienced immigration attorneys and advocates. This will help me become a better advocate for the immigrant populations in Oregon,” he says.
For Valladares, the fellowship experience has been a way to “gain more knowledge from experienced attorneys and other fellows.” He says, “it feels like a continuation of my time in the Immigration Clinic, and has felt like a smooth transition from student to attorney so far.”
Planning for the Future
As Willamette Law continues to build out immigration law offerings, these fellowships, mentorship opportunities and collaborative partnerships are an important part of leveraging the post-graduate opportunities presented by the Supreme Court’s adoption of the Supervised Practice Portfolio Examination (SPPE). As a new licensure pathway, the SPPE enables graduates to work in placements supervised by licensed attorneys and submit a portfolio of work to be examined by the Board of Bar Examiners for admission to the Oregon State Bar. The Oregon Immigrant Justice Fellowship will open the door for employment and mentorship opportunities for graduates hoping to pursue this new licensure pathway while also helping to serve in areas where attorneys are most needed.
“We are hopeful that these three current Oregon Immigrant Justice Fellows will help to pave the way for us to grow in a sustainable way and add more fellows over the years to come. Defining more clear avenues for students to get immigration law experience and post-graduate employment will help us to better serve Oregonians,” says Zilberman.
In looking ahead to the future opportunities, Coutifaris shares that she hopes “the partnership with Willamette Law, and the current Oregon Immigrant Justice Fellows, will help create a future pipeline to help us educate, train, and expand the number of qualified immigration attorneys serving the impacted community.”
