Habeas Petitions:

Challenging Prolonged & Indefinite Immigration Detention

Monday, November 9, 2015, 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Greenberg Traurig LLP, 44th Floor, 333 SE 2nd Avenue, Miami, FL 33131

Learn how to file a petition for writ of habeas corpus to challenge the detention of immigrants who are detained under immigration law’s mandatory detention provisions or who are detained even though they are not likely to be deported.  The training will also cover the basics of bond and requesting release. 

michael tan aclu aila cle training nov 2015Featured speakers:

  • Rebecca Sharpless, University of Miami School of Law
  • Michael Tan, ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project
  • Michael Vastine, St. Thomas University School of Law

Moderators: 

  • Shalini Goel Agarwal, ACLU of Florida
  • Sui Chung, Immigration Law & Litigation Group

Agenda

  • 11:00 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. - Basics of Release from Immigration Detention [Rebecca Sharpless & Michael Vastine]
  • 11:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. - Lunch
  • 12:15 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. - Habeas Challenges in U.S. District Court [Michael Tan]
  • 1:15 p.m. to 1:25 p.m. - Break
  • 1:25 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. - Practical Tips on Filing Habeas Petitions [Rebecca Sharpless & Michael Vastine]

 

(2.8 CLE credits, based upon 50-minute hours)

Presenters

Shalini Goel Agarwal is a Staff Attorney at the ACLU of Florida.  Her work focuses on civil rights, racial justice, and immigrants’ rights issues.  In 2012, she was a finalist for the Daily Business Review’s Most Effective Public Interest Lawyers award for her work on Lebron v. Wilkins, a class action lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of drug testing of welfare applicants.  Previously, Shalini worked at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and at Relman, Dane & Colfax, where she litigated housing and employment discrimination cases.  She also clerked for Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.  Shalini graduated from Boalt Hall, UC Berkeley Law School, where she was a member of the Order of the Coif, an editor of The California Law Review, and a recipient of the John Stauffer Merit Scholarship.  She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vanderbilt University with a bachelor’s degree in English and received her master’s degree in Humanities from the University of Chicago.  She is admitted to practice in Florida, California, and D.C.  Prior to law school, Shalini worked as a high school English teacher.

Sui Chung is First Vice President of American Immigration Lawyers Association South Florida Executive Committee and Co-Chair of the Executive Office for Immigration Review Liaison Committee.  She also serves on the AILA National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Liaison Committee, AILA National Family Detention Task Force, the AILA Stewart Detention Center Task Force, and the Unlicensed Practice of Law Committee of the Florida Bar.  She is an attorney with Immigration Law & Litigation Group, based in Miami, Florida, and specializes in removal defense with a focus on criminal and appellate matters and cases involving immigrant victims of crime.  Ms. Chung has worked under a Florida Bar Foundation grant through which she provided training to law enforcement officers and state prosecutors regarding the benefits available to immigrant victims of crime.  She was co-counsel in Hernandez v. State, the lead case in the Florida Supreme Court addressing an immigrant defendant’s right to effective representation of counsel.  She was lead counsel of “Enrique,” the world’s most well known unaccompanied immigrant minor, subject of the award-winning non-fiction novel, Enrique’s Journey.  Ms. Chung was also lead attorney for multiple named plaintiffs from the class action, Franco-Gonzalez v. Holder, in bond proceedings.  As the prior Chair of AILA South Florida’s Pro Bono Project, she led the creation and implementation of the Krome Mental Incompetency Project and Broward Transitional Center Bond Project.  In 2012, AILA National awarded her the Michael Maggio Memorial Pro Bono Service Award.  Ms. Chung was also nominated for The Florida Bar President’s Pro Bono Service Award and the Young Lawyers Division Pro Bono Service Award.  She began her career at the Board of Immigration Appeals after she was selected for the U.S. Department of Justice Attorney General Honors Program.  She serves on the boards of Catholic Legal Services, Archdiocese of Miami, Inc., as well as the political action committee, Immigrants’ List.  Ms. Chung received her Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center, and Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Music degrees from Oberlin College and Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

Rebecca Sharpless is the Director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law.  She researches and writes in the areas of progressive lawyering, feminist theory, and the intersection of immigration and criminal law.  Professor Sharpless speaks widely on immigration law, including at events such as the annual conference of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.  She is a board member of the South Florida Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association as well as a longstanding board member of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild.  Immediately before joining the School of Law's faculty, she was a Visiting Clinical Professor of Law at Florida International University's College of Law, where she taught in-house clinics in the areas of immigration and human rights and a doctrinal course on immigration law.  From 1996 to 2007, Professor Sharpless was a supervising attorney at Americans for Immigrant Justice (formerly Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center), where she engaged in extensive litigation on behalf of low-income immigrants as lead counsel in cases before the United States Courts of Appeals and United States District Courts as well as in immigration court and before the Board of Immigration Appeals. She has received awards and recognition for her work.

Michael Tan is a Staff Attorney at the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project (IRP).  His practice includes litigation and advocacy relating to immigration detention and immigrants' access to education. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the Yale Law School and also holds a Master's Degree in Comparative Literature from New York University.  After law school, Michael clerked for the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and worked at IRP as Skadden Fellow and a Liman Public Interest Fellow.  In 2014, he was awarded a California Lawyer of the Year Award in Immigration Law for his work on Rodriguez v. Robbins, a class action lawsuit challenging the prolonged detention of immigrants without bond hearings.  Outside the ACLU, Michael serves as a Steering Committee member of the Detention Watch Network.

Michael Vastine is a Professor of Law and Director of the Immigration Clinic at St. Thomas University School of Law.  Michael joined the St. Thomas faculty in 2004.  His practice and research focus on immigration litigation, particularly regarding the deportation consequences of criminal convictions and the due process rights of immigrants.  In 2013, he was awarded the AILA Elmer Fried Award for Excellence in Teaching, presented by the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) at its annual conference.  He is on the Executive Committee of the South Florida Chapter of AILA, among numerous other service positions in regional and national organizations of attorneys and legal educators.  Michael participates in or leads significant litigation in the federal, state and administrative courts, including seminal cases in the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.  Michael has served as counsel for amicus curiae in numerous other challenges to restrictions on relief from removal and challenging findings of immigration consequences flowing from criminal convictions.  His litigation highlights include co-representing and arguing the lead post-Padilla v. Kentucky case, Hernandez v. State, at the Florida Supreme Court (reversing the long-standing precedent that Florida’s judicial plea colloquy cured ineffective counsel regarding the immigration consequences of a guilty plea) and representing the successful petitioner in Donawa v. U.S. Att’y Gen. (11th Cir. 2013) (establishing that a conviction under Florida Statutes §§ 893.13/893.101 (sale or delivery of a controlled substance) should not be considered a “drug trafficking crime” aggravated felony in removal proceedings).  Michael is widely published in law journals, the Lexis-Nexis Emerging Issues series and Bender’s Immigration Bulletin and is a frequent presenter at local, state, regional and national meetings, conferences and teleseminars of immigration practitioners and legal educators.

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