Mike Kagan

How is the UNLV Immigration Clinic working during the current crisis? 

The reality is that a lot of people who work with immigrants have been responding to an emergency for several years now, both in the practicalities of our work and psychologically. Just as an example, this spring we've been trying to help as many people as possible renew their DACA permits, because the futures of tens of thousands of people are about to be decided by the Supreme Court. That's a crisis moment we knew was coming, long before anyone heard of coronavirus. But the public health and economic situation will make it much harder to respond as well as we should. In the clinic, we've expanded our University Legal Services project, which now serves students, staff and their families at the College of Southern Nevada and at UNLV. And we're doing more work with people detained by ICE than ever before. We can do that because two of our alums from last year -- Michael Shamoon and Paloma Guerrero -- now work with us as fellows in the clinic. And we still have the Bernstein Children's Rights program, led by Martha Menendez, which defends child refugees, and which is as urgent as ever. There are practical challenges right now, but it took Michael Shamoon just a couple days to move DACA renewals and legal counseling online. Michael may have more DACA renewals last week than the whole clinic has done in any week since September 2017. It's still hard to work with many of our clients remotely. Some are detained. Some don't have computer access. But I think the hardest thing is just not working together. This work is very stressful, and often what gets us through is the camaraderie with the student attorneys and colleagues who are with us in the trenches. That's just hard to replace over Zoom. 

You have your first book coming out. What's it about?

The book explains the illogical, complex cruelties of immigration law, hopefully in an accessible way. But it's also much more personal. I try to capture the stories of some of the people who make Las Vegas work, and the invisible attack they've been facing -- and how the community here has responded. I also tried to capture the personal strain, exhaustion and also solidarity that I've seen. To be honest, I had intended to write something much more scholarly, about the state of immigration law. But when I sat down, what came out first was about my own daughter, who is adopted from Ethiopia, and how she genuinely feared she would be deported. That's where the book starts. It's called The Battle to Stay in America, and it'll be out August 11. And I am supposed to tell people that you can pre-order it now!