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Tag: Jason Corral

A celebration of immigration

March 7, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Via Harvard Gazette

With DACA in place for now, day’s events focus on protecting students, and on the artistry that other cultures bestow

Jason Corral and Cindy Zapata of the Immigration and Refugee Clinic advised students of their legal rights during "A Day of Hope of Resistance," part of a series of events exploring questions about the termination of DACA and TPS, deportations, and the current state of immigration policy.

Jason Corral and Cindy Zapata of the Immigration and Refugee Clinic advised students of their legal rights during “A Day of Hope of Resistance,” part of a series of events exploring questions about the termination of DACA and TPS, deportations, and the current state of immigration policy.
Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

Life for undocumented immigrants is full of risks. Any encounter with law-enforcement officials — on the sidewalk, while they are driving, or in their homes in the middle of the night — can lead to arrest and possible deportation.

But in all such cases, undocumented immigrants have rights. They have the right to remain silent, to refuse to consent to a search, and to decline to open the front door unless officials have a warrant.

At a workshop on immigrants’ rights held Monday morning at the Memorial Church, attorneys Jason Corral and Cindy Zapata of the Harvard Immigration & Refugee Clinical Program shared legal advice on how to deal with the more aggressive enforcement of immigration laws under the Trump administration. Corral has provided legal services to at least 60 undocumented students studying at Harvard.

“In this new day and age, any evidence you can provide, you can end up in removal proceedings,” said Corral.

The event was part of the DACA Seminar, a series of daylong events on campus to highlight, among other things, the future of the federal program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an Obama-era initiative that protects young immigrants from deportation.

Nearly 800,000 young immigrants have benefited from the program, but last September the Trump administration announced its end and set March 5 as a deadline for Congress to come up with a solution for those under its protections. But the deadline lost much of its meaning when the Supreme Court said that it would not rule on the administration’s plan to end the program. Federal district judges in New York and California had blocked the move to end DACA.

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On DACA, questions top answers

September 26, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Via Harvard Law Today

Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program Staff Attorney Jason Corrall on HKS panel

Photo of panelists at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics

Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer.
Dan Balz (moderator) (from left) Chief Correspondent, The Washington Post, Fall 2017 Resident Fellow, Institute of Politics; Carlos Rojas, Special Projects Consultant, Youth on Board Massachusetts-based Immigrant Rights Advocate; Roberto Gonzalez, Professor of Education, HGSE; Jason Corral, Staff Attorney, Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, talk during the panel: “DACA what’s next” after Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals inside the JFK Jr. Forum.

When the Trump administration announced on Sept. 5 that it intended to upend the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), which has banned deportation of many young immigrants, the move seemed to set a general course for what would come next.

But by the time the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics (IOP) held a John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum on the issue Friday, the decision had become murkier again, underlining both the significance and the complexity of the issues surrounding immigration, documentation, and legal rights for those young people.

Opening the discussion on “DACA: What’s Next,” moderator Dan Balz, chief correspondent for the Washington Post and a fall resident fellow at the IOP, summarized recent developments, asking the panel members — Carlos Rojas, an immigrant rights advocate and special projects consultant for Youth on Board; Roberto G. Gonzalez, professor of education, Harvard Graduate School of Education; and Jason Corral, staff attorney, Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical program — for their take on the social media back and forth.

In announcing an end to the current program, President Trump had said he wanted Congress to determine a replacement policy within six months. But last week he tweeted: “Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military?”

Yet Rojas, who was brought to this country from Colombia at age 4, dismissed the idea that such tweets represented any real reversal. “His tweets are demonstrative of his role — an incredibly destructive, confusing, muddled role,” said Rojas, whose mother fled Colombia with her son because of violence that had claimed her brother. “Our ability to raise families and hold jobs is now in jeopardy.”

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