LABOR LAW
Defending Deportees at Hofstra Law: A Conversation with DDC Director Emily Torstveit Ngara by Gregory DeFreitas
Long Island has figured prominently in the nation’s volatile immigration debates since the first sizeable numbers of refugees fleeing the Central American wars began arriving in the early 1980s. Then in the spring of 2017, the new administration in Washington spotlighted the region in trying to make its case that unauthorized immigration posed a growing crime threat that justified unprecedented increases in deportations. First, Attorney General Jeff Sessions held an April press conference in Suffolk County, followed by a July 28th presidential visit. Having earlier characterized the country’s cities as “bloodstained killing fields” overrun with undocumented immigrants, Mr. Trump told a small community college audience in Brentwood: “I never thought I’d be standing up here talking about liberating towns on Long Island where I grew up.” By year end, arrests of undocumented migrants had jumped sharply since the previous year.
A few weeks after the January inauguration, Judge Gail Prudenti, dean of the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, announced the formation of the Deportation Defense Clinic. Since it began operations in June 2017, the DDC has provided direct representation for individuals at imminent risk of deportation as well as law reform advocacy and education in communities near its Long Island base. Its legal team has represented clients from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Haiti, British Virgin Islands, Cote D’Ivoire, Brazil, and Peru.
Emily Torstveit Ngara is the director of the DDC. Before joining the clinical law faculty at Hofstra, Professor Torstveit Ngara was a Clinical Fellow in the University of Baltimore Immigrant Rights Clinic and the University of the District of Columbia Immigration and Human Rights Clinic, where she supervised students in