IMMIGRATION CLINIC STUDENTS RECEIVE SKADDEN FELLOWSHIPS
Julio Colby ’24 and Sara Kamouni ’24 have been selected as recipients of the Skadden Fellowship. The two-year fellowship, launched by the Skadden Foundation in 1988, supports newly graduated lawyers to pursue public interest law on a full-time basis with a mission to improve legal services for the poor and encourage economic independence …
COLBY: As a child of Latin American immigrants, I have always been interested in working with immigrant communities. Working on asylum cases at a previous internship at RAICES Texas is what drew me to public interest law in the first place, and I wanted to build on that experience through clinical work. My first big case at HIRC had a particular impact on me. Alongside an incredible clinical team, I helped a client prepare for her asylum hearing. Her case had been pending in the system for eight years, during which she had no idea whether she would be sent back to a country where she faced serious physical harm or death, or if she would be able to safely remain in the US. As her hearing date got closer, the life-or-death consequences of the Immigration Judge’s ultimate decision really set in, and it imbued the work with a different gravity. I’ll never forget our client’s immense joy and relief when the judge granted her asylum, and how everyone in the room felt it with her. That experience underscored how high the stakes are for immigrant clients, and why it’s so important that they have devoted, invested advocates on their side to represent them.
