Marie-Gabrielle Schneck (2L)

Northwest Immigrant Rights Project

Seattle, WA

Gabrielle is working at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP), the only organization that provides comprehensive immigration legal services to low-income people in Washington State. Gabrielle is interning with NWIRP's Tacoma office, which serves the Northwest Detention Center, a privately run immigration jail in Tacoma, Washington. Around thirty people are brought to the detention center and put in deportation proceedings every day. Ninety percent of detainees are unrepresented, and NWIRP is the only legal services organization assisting pro se detainees. As an intern, Gabrielle helps with the Legal Orientation Program, through which NWIRP provides "Know Your Rights" presentations each morning to detainees and conducts intakes with individual detainees to identify potential defenses to deportation. She is also taking on an asylum case and is responsible for interviewing her client, preparing the case, and appearing in court. Gabrielle is excited to be receiving mentorship in this important area of advocacy and grateful for the opportunity to provide legal support to some of the most vulnerable people in our communities.

July 31, 2011

Last week, I filed a pre-hearing statement and evidence packet for the case that I have been working on all summer. It's an asylum application for a person who is detained and in deportation proceedings. He has a political asylum claim based on past persecution in his home country. After spending many hours in the detention center interviewing him about the torture that he suffered in order to learn his story and draft his declaration, I assumed that this was not the first time that he had been asked to talk about what he had been through.

After a psychological evaluation, though, I learned that he was struggling with untreated, accumulated post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It turns out that he had never spoken before about being tortured in all of the thirty-some years since it happened. The psychologist pointed me to the US Veterans website, which has extensive information about the connections between untreated PTSD and alcohol use, explaining that if you get sober, failure to treat the PTSD will increase the likelihood of relapse. My client has sought out recovery programs many times and has often relapsed. I printed off the information from the Veterans website and brought it in to show my client. As we read through the information together, it was as if all these connections were being made for him. He said it was a real breakthrough, and he wondered how his life could have been different twenty or twenty-five years ago if he had known that PTSD treatment existed. He said that this realization makes him very hopeful.

There are different hats that we wear as law student and lawyers: the psychologist, the social worker, the friend, or perhaps the only person who visits a client while they are detained. In order to truly advocate for a client, we may need to provide support in more than one way. Sometimes we take risks, especially in areas where we are not trained. Being able to identify this gap in services, the lack of PTSD treatment, and link him with appropriate treatment moving forward will help him on certain crucial discretionary issues in his legal case. This case has been an incredible opportunity to develop my legal skills, especially in the areas of research and writing. The best part, though, has been seeing my client gain some insight and hope that he did not have before. He is looking forward to his hearing next week, and so am I.

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July 1, 2011

As an intern at NWIRP's Tacoma office, I spend two mornings each week at the detention center meeting with clients and conducting intakes. I have learned a lot about gathering information from people about their cases and assessing possibilities for immigration relief.

Each day, I listen to the voicemail messages left by detainees, their friends, and family members, asking us to visit a particular person who has been locked up. I have gained a great respect for the energy and time that it takes to run the Legal Orientation Program when such a large number of people are in need of its services.

I have also gained familiarity with the process of supporting pro se clients as opposed to representing people in a traditional attorney-client relationship. Thus far, this work has included helping detainees obtain police reports and other supporting documentation for their cases as well as preparing them for their individual hearings.