O'Melveny's 2018-2019 Pro Bono Review

O’MELVENY PRO BONO PROGRAM REVIEW 2018- 2019 15 on a minor drug possession charge, he was deported to Mexico, where he was tortured by police officers. He then fled back to the US. His petition to stay in the US was denied by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), but a Ninth Circuit panel reversed that decision, holding that the BIA had erred by applying a standard that applied to conventional asylum claims rather than to asylum claims for torture victims. The panel also reversed the BIA’s denial of relief under the Convention Against Torture Act, finding that the BIA had improperly placed the burden on Mr. Barajas-Romero to prove that he could not safely relocate to other areas within Mexico. O’Melveny argued the case along with a UCLA law student as part of the firm’s Ninth Circuit pro bono clinic with the university. Helping Children Obtain Asylum Three siblings sought asylum to escape the violence, sexual assault, and extortion they experienced in their native Guatemala. Their parents had fled to the US after their father had been threatened because of his work as a government agent. The siblings then moved from house to house in Guatemala, where they were repeatedly abused. The parents started receiving anonymous threatening messages on Facebook demanding money or their children would be killed. After those threats, the three siblings fled to the US to join their parents. At a clinic with Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), which included in-house lawyers from client Corelogic, O’Melveny met the siblings. O’Melveny then filed asylum applications for each child, with declarations and briefs describing each child’s experience. The team argued that the children be granted asylum because they were likely to face persecution if they returned to Guatemala. O’Melveny attorneys prepared and filed supporting documents, declarations, and briefs, and met with the children for several rounds of practice interviews, preparing them to tell the horrific stories of what they had suffered. After the hearing, the immigration judge ruled that the three siblings be allowed to stay in the US. The three siblings now attend high school in California, and each is focusing on the future— one wants to be a chef, one a physician, and the other is “weighing his options.” Freeing Asylum-Seekers from Prolonged Detention W.A. recently sought refuge in the US after he and his family were violently attacked by the political opposition party in their native Haiti. After his stepmother, who had raised him, was murdered by the opposition party, W.A. escaped through Central America and presented himself at the US-Mexico border. President Trump’s executive order—Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements—has made it difficult for asylum-seekers to be released from custody while their cases are pending. Instead, these refugees fleeing persecution are often held in county jails with no bond hearing or any other review, even when they have strong asylum cases, are not a flight risk, and are already traumatized. Because this ongoing detention raises statutory and constitutional questions, O’Melveny wrote a habeas petition for W.A., which was granted. He had been unlawfully detained for 192 days without a bond hearing or any other review of his detention and was being held among