Unlike previous years where the trip has focused solely on assisting individual adult detainees being held at the York County Prison in York, Pennsylvania, this year UConn teams also worked with families being held in detention at the Berks County Family Residential Center in Leesport, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
Law and Social Work: A Unique Model<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n While other colleges and universities have sponsored similar programs where faculty and law students assist detainees in immigration proceedings, UConn\u2019s program is unique in that it also integrates social workers with mental health and trauma expertise in its work.<\/p>\n \u201cThe School of Social Work shares with the Law School dual missions of preparing students for professional practice and adding to our respective knowledge bases,\u201d said Nina Rovinelli Heller, the dean of the School of Social Work and a clinical social worker who participated in the trip for the first time this year. \u201cAs our two schools have worked together on this detention project, we are increasingly aware of points of convergence in social justice practice. The combination of law and social work can yield important initiatives on behalf of many oppressed and disadvantaged groups.\u201d<\/p>\n Jon Bauer is a clinical professor of law and director of the UConn School of Law\u2019s Asylum and Human Rights Clinic. A lead co-organizer of the annual trip, Bauer said that the experience of having mental health professionals working side-by side with legal teams is tremendously valuable from both a client-service perspective but also for the well-being of the detainees themselves.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a spillover therapeutic value for the clients, although it was not therapy,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd, even in cases where no psychological evaluation was conducted, it was a great resource for the lawyers and law students to be able to sound out issues with the social workers about how to approach some difficult issues. It was very valuable to get input on what to do, for example, with a client who seemed depressed and inclined to give up, even though they might have a strong claim for relief.”<\/p>\n In addition to conducting mental health evaluations and supporting the practice work of the legal teams, UConn\u2019s social work contingent also conducted trainings prior to the trip to help prepare the volunteer participants for the personal and emotional toll that the experiences might have on them, and later made themselves available to some of the legal team members and volunteer interpreters who found themselves struggling with the weight of the stories they encountered while assisting clients in detention.<\/p>\n \u201cThe support in terms of helping people in the legal group to process their emotions and their stress \u2013 having the social work contingent was tremendously valuable,\u201d said Bauer.<\/p>\n The social work clinicians also made themselves available as expert witnesses supporting the detained clients, offering to provide testimony by telephone if necessary at proceedings that were scheduled to continue well after the week-long trip had concluded.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat an incredible opportunity to use your professional training and your specialized skill set for good in this realm, and for people who rarely have the opportunity to have a legal representative or legal team member or to meet with a mental health professional to have the opportunity to do so,\u201d said S. Megan Berthold, an associate professor in UConn\u2019s School of Social Work who was one of the original co-organizers of the inaugural Immigration Detention Service Project trip and has participated in the project every year. \u201cFor some, it\u2019d be the very first time in their life that they\u2019ve ever met with a lawyer, a law student, or a mental health professional.\u201d<\/p>\n The Challenges of Working with Detained Children<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n One of just three family detention facilities in the country, and with the capacity to hold 96 detainees, about 25 refugees seeking asylum were at Berks while the UConn teams worked in the facility, which has been the subject of some controversy, with local advocacy groups and former detainees calling for its closure.<\/p>\n Unlike the highly publicized masses of refugees at the U.S.\u2019s southern border, most of the Berks residents entered the country through the northern border, with asylum seekers from countries including Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, India, and Romania first traveling to Canada before crossing the border and seeking asylum protections in the United States.<\/p>\n \u201cBerks has the veneer of being a kid-friendly place, but it has a strange, Twilight-Zone sort of vibe to it,\u201d said Bauer. \u201cIt\u2019s like it\u2019s trying very hard to be kid-friendly, but it\u2019s in essence a detention center.\u201d<\/p>\n Bauer said that the teams encountered difficulties at Berks right away, when facility administrators suddenly changed rules about how many people could be physically in the room with a detainee at any time, which meant that, if an interpreter was needed to communicate with the family, a member of the legal team would have to sit out the meeting due to this unexpected limitation.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really hard to be both the lawyer and the interpreter,\u201d said Berthold, \u201cso the interpreters really were pivotal. It takes specialized skills and personal abilities to be able to interpret in these sorts of cases.\u201d<\/p>\n The staff at Berks also would not tell the legal teams when hearings were scheduled to occur, instead saying that information had to come from the asylum office in New Jersey, which led to the legal staff missing a few hearings and then attending others on the fly when meetings meant to prepare detainees for credible fear interviews suddenly turned into actual hearings before federal asylum officers.<\/p>\n In total, one of the UConn teams at Berks prepared seven families for their credible fear interviews while working at the facility, and then actually represented three of the families before an asylum officer at their credible fear interview proceedings.<\/p>\n A second UConn team worked intensively with a family that was already under a deportation order and prepared a motion to reopen their removal proceedings. That motion resulted in an initial stay of the deportation order; the motion was later granted, and the family was released from detention pending additional proceedings as they pursue their claim for asylum.<\/p>\n The detained parents being held at Berks at the time ranged in age from 20 to 40; the youngest child the UConn teams saw in detention was two years old, while the oldest was 16.<\/p>\n \u201cDuring the credible fear interviews the legal team was sitting in a room with the family, and we were allowed to intervene occasionally and to make a closing argument,\u201d said Bauer. \u201cBut usually the kids were there at the credible fear interviews, which was difficult because the kids have to listen to a parent talking about their persecution. The kids could be excused, but there\u2019s kind of a presumption that, unless special steps were taken to excuse the kids, they were going to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n As a mental health professional, Berthold has worked extensively with refugees, immigrants, survivors of torture and asylum seekers, but working with children in detention presented particular challenges, especially when children could be forced to either listen to their parents testify about their credible fears of returning to their home country or to actually testify themselves.<\/p>\n \u201cIt can be very damaging to the child, who looks to their parent for safety and security, and for protection \u2013 emotional, physical protection \u2013 to be confronted with some of this reality,\u201d said Berthold. \u201cWow, my parent has these big limitations and there really is a danger. Our lives were in danger. Because that\u2019s what you have to prove in a credible fear interview. You fear that your life would be in danger if you were to go back, and that can be just terrifying, especially when the future is so unknown.\u201d<\/p>\n One teenager, Bauer said, was so terrified of disclosing any information about his own experiences that he asked his father not to talk about it either; he feared that the people who had threatened him in his home country would take revenge if the family was sent back. Children will often feel a sense of responsibility, Berthold said, if they are forced to testify and the outcome is then unfavorable for the family.<\/p>\n \u201cA child may not understand all the proceedings and may feel very conflicted and uncertain,\u201d Berthold said. \u201cAre they going to cause a big problem? Are they going to be the reason their family gets sent back? Of course, it depends on the age and the developmental level of the child, and what they can understand, but it puts children in really bad situations.\u201d<\/p>\n Six of the eight families the UConn teams worked with at Berks are now out of detention while the full proceedings of their pending asylum cases proceed.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not done yet, but they\u2019re out of detention, which must be a huge relief, but they also are now able to have their cases actually examined on the merits and to maybe have that chance to get asylum and safety here,\u201d said Berthold. \u201cSo, I find that to be, I think for the group, just enormously meaningful, knowing that our teams really contributed to that \u2013 the legal teams, the social work teams \u2013 but also, more importantly, knowing how meaningful that is for the people themselves, what a change in their life circumstances that provides them.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSeven Angels\u201d at York<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe had one client in particular who was very grateful for the work that we were doing and very poetically expressive of his gratitude,\u201d said Valeria Gomez, the William R. Davis Clinical Teaching Fellow in UConn\u2019s Asylum and Human Rights Clinic who led one of the UConn legal teams that worked primarily at York County Prison this year.<\/p>\n \u201cHe had a hearing coming up within the next week, so we were very time constrained for him,\u201d Gomez said of the poetic detainee. \u201cHe said, \u2018I was praying for God to send me one person, just one person to sort of kind of guide me, tell me what I had to say, because I had no idea, and then he sent me seven angels.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The client was granted asylum the very next week.<\/p>\n Surrounded by fences topped with razor wire, York looks from the outside like a typical state or county prison and can hold more than 2,000 offenders. But it also houses federal immigration detainees in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n \u201cMany of us found our clients to be very resilient and inspiring, even in the context of enormously challenging life circumstances,\u201d said Heller. \u201cThey truly gave a \u2018face\u2019 to the human realities of seeking asylum.\u201d<\/p>\n While teams at Berks focused mainly on the credible fear interview process, many of their clients at York were awaiting full asylum hearings while still in detention. Gomez and the legal teams worked closely with School of Social Work Associate Professors Kathryn Libal, director of UConn\u2019s Human Rights Institute, and Scott Harding, who focused on conducting research and preparing reports on conditions in the detainees\u2019 home countries that would support their asylum claims.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we were doing was trying to prepare the person who was detained for what that hearing might look like, while also trying to develop a declaration and trying to put together evidence packets,\u201d said Gomez. \u201c[The social work team] did a fantastic job of accumulating country conditions research that essentially gave credence to the basis of their stories.\u201d<\/p>\n While many of the detainees they worked with had asked to meet with counselors or therapists, officials at York had not followed up with these requests. Berthold and Heller conducted mental health evaluations that could be used to support the detainees\u2019 claims in their asylum proceedings but also provided an outlet for refugees to talk about their experiences in ways they had not previously been afforded.<\/p>\n \u201cThe two clients we worked with both told us both that they really appreciated the opportunity to tell their story, because it felt like they were relieving some of the pressure that they had to keep inside by just trying to keep the story and not having anyone to share it with,\u201d Gomez said. \u201cAs legal professionals, and as law students, we were concerned because we\u2019re providing legal services \u2013 we\u2019re not trained to offer therapy or mental health counseling \u2013 but it was just a reflection of how much of need for that there is in this system.\u201d<\/p>\n While the York teams didn\u2019t experience the same administrative difficulties as the Berks teams \u2013 in fact, Gomez said, the correction officers at York were generally pleasant and interested in the work the volunteers were doing \u2013 the teams struggled with the limited amount of time they had to meet with clients to prepare the necessary documents to make their legal claims.<\/p>\n Gomez said that the law student volunteers who had worked through the Asylum and Human Rights Clinic \u2013 where they take a pro bono case and work deliberately with one client on their immigration claim throughout the semester \u2013 were able to contrast that experience with the rapid-fire, on-the-spot, and limited resource experience of working in a detention facility.<\/p>\n \u201cThe term that we kept throwing around was \u2018crisis lawyering,\u2019\u201d said Gomez. \u201cOne student found it very gratifying and a capstone to the clinic experience, because what she got to learn through the slow deliberate process she got to apply in a very different environment, which is probably more akin to working in under-resourced, over-worked, nonprofit-organization-type of public interest work.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked what their advice would be to anyone considering participating in a future Immigration Detention Service Project trip, Bauer, Berthold and Gomez all responded with a very emphatic, \u201cDo it!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Do it\u2019 sounds like sort of a joke answer, but it really isn\u2019t,\u201d said Gomez. \u201cWe\u2019re unique in that we bring the social work contingent and we bring undergrad interpreters who we train. So, our system is pretty great\u2026but, the collaboration that we have with social workers just elevates the quality of work that we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s really keen dedication and expertise that\u2019s been built through partnership with the law school\u2019s Asylum and Human Rights Clinic,\u201d Berthold said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been building capacity as a project, but there\u2019s just such an enormous need that we want to continue to build capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n UConn\u2019s Immigration Detention Service Project is supported by funding from the UConn Foundation; the Schools of Social Work and Law; and UConn\u2019s Human Rights Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" UConn students, faculty members, and alumni from across a range of disciplines come together each year to provide aid to asylum-seekers at two federal detention centers in Pennsylvania. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":152307,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1715,1857,92,2225,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2168],"class_list":["post-151916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-impact","category-law","category-uconn-hartford","category-uconn-storrs","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 07:15:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151916"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152356,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151916\/revisions\/152356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/152307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151916"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=151916"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=151916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Law](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Jenny-and-Valeria_higher-Res-1-768x1024.jpg\")