This story was originally published by The World on May 12, 2022. It is reprinted here with permission.
María Teresa Navas Mejía, a long-term employee at the University of Colorado Boulder, recently received her green card thanks to Carina De La Torre and students in the law school's Immigration Defense Clinic.
University of Colorado law school professor Violeta Chapin, standing next to a projector, showed her students several images of different groups of immigrants at the US southern border, plus refugees fleeing Ukraine.
“There are some really sort of stark visual differences between the treatment of Ukrainian refugees and treatment that we saw of refugees, mostly from Latin America and from Haiti, over the last few years, but also just over the last few months,” she said.
This class is part of the law school’s Immigration Defense Clinic. It’s one of nine clinics at the university in Boulder that allow students to get hands-on experience representing clients. They provide free legal services to immigrants in the community. Some of the students come from immigrant families themselves.
Chapin, who was born in Costa Rica, is the clinic’s director.
“Immigrants, if they want a lawyer — and many of them do, and need a lawyer — they have to pay shocking amounts of money for an immigration lawyer. Many of them just simply can't afford it.”
Violeta Chapin, University of Colorado, law school professor
“Immigrants, if they want a lawyer — and many of them do, and need a lawyer...
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