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Tag: Nancy Kelly

Nancy Kelly: A Top Women of Law Honoree

September 2, 2016 / / 0 Comments
Co-Managing Attorney of HIRC at Greater Boston Legal Services

Co-Managing Attorney of HIRC at Greater Boston Legal Services

Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly has named Senior Clinical Instructor and Co-Managing Director of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic at GBLS, Nancy Kelly, as one of its Top Women for 2016. A ceremony will be held on October 27th at the Boston Marriott Copley Place to recognize her and the other honorees.

Ms. Kelly has worked as a Harvard Law School Human Rights Program fellow and also as an adjunct professor of immigration and asylum law at Northeastern University School of Law.  At the Human Rights Program, she initiated the nationally and internationally prominent Women Refugees Project, a centerpiece of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic’s work. Among other honors, Ms. Kelly received the 2000 John G. Brooks Award of the Boston Bar Association for her work with refugee women and children, and for her teaching at the clinic.

Each year Lawyers Weekly honors women attorneys who have made tremendous professional strides and demonstrated great accomplishments in the legal field, which includes: pro bono, social justice, advocacy and business. The awards highlight women who are pioneers, educators, trailblazers, and role models.

Our office extends heartfelt congratulations to Ms. Kelly on this great achievement!

Special Immigrant Juvenile Status in Massachusetts

August 26, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Via Boston Bar Journal

By Nancy Kelly

Case Focus

kelly_nancyIn a recent decision, Recinos v. Escobar, the Supreme Judicial Court (“SJC”) addressed and resolved a discrepancy between state and federal law as to whether individuals between the ages of 18 and 21 fall within the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts courts.  473 Mass. 734 (2016).  The federal immigration statute considers individuals under the age of 21 children, but Massachusetts ordinarily considers individuals over the age of 18 adults.  The discrepancy is important in immigration cases when individuals between the ages of 18 and 21 apply for Special Immigrant Juvenile (“SIJ”) status before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services of the Department of Homeland Security (“USCIS”).

The plaintiff Recinos, Liliana Recinos, is a 20-year-old unmarried Salvadoran who attempted to apply to USCIS for SIJ status.  SIJ status is available as an avenue for juveniles who have suffered abuse, neglect or abandonment to apply for permanent resident status before USCIS or the Immigration Court.  As a prerequisite to applying for SIJ status, an applicant must obtain findings from a state court with jurisdiction to make determinations about the custody and care of juveniles that: 1) the applicant is dependent on the juvenile court; 2) reunification with one or both parents is not viable due to abuse, neglect or abandonment; and 3) it is not in the applicant’s best interests to return to her country of origin.  Armed with those findings, a juvenile, up to age 21, can file a petition with USCIS for classification as a SIJ.  If that classification is granted, the applicant can apply for lawful permanent resident status in the United States.

Recinos sought equitable and declaratory relief from the Middlesex County Probate and Family Court, specifically requesting the findings that would allow her to apply to USCIS for SIJ status.  Twenty years old at the time of filing, Recinos “chronicled a childhood riddled with instances of physical and emotional abuse by her father,” “her mother’s failure to protect her,” and “chronic gang violence in her neighborhood.”  Recinos at 736.  The judge dismissed her complaint for lack of jurisdiction because she was over 18 years of age.  Recinos filed an appeal with the Appeals Court, seeking expedited processing.  The SJC took the appeal on its own motion and expedited the case to preserve Recinos’ opportunity to apply for SIJ status before her 21st birthday.

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Nancy Kelly and John Willshire Carrera win Dean’s Award for Excellence

October 20, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Via the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program 

From left: John Willshire Carrera, Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow, Nancy Kelly, and Lisa Dealy, Assistant Dean for Clinical and Pro Bono Programs

From left: John Willshire Carrera, Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow, Nancy Kelly, and Lisa Dealy, Assistant Dean for Clinical and Pro Bono Programs

Congratulations to Nancy Kelly and John Willshire Carrera, co-managing directors of HIRC at Greater Boston Legal Services, who recently won the Harvard Law School’s Dean’s Award for Excellence for their exceptional teaching and mentoring of students at Harvard Law School and for their leadership in developing child asylum and gender-based asylum law, as well as indigenous Guatemalan and gang-based asylum claims.

John and Nancy helped found HIRC 30 years ago and have worked tirelessly over the years to help immigrants and to train generations of immigration attorneys. In their nominations letters, John and Nancy’s colleagues described the dedication, compassion and skill they have brought to HIRC over the past 30 years:

“Their commitment to legal service and their dedication and ability to build ties between our law school and the legal services community has helped make us a true social justice clinic.”

excellenceaward

HIRC staff members (from left): Liala Buoniconti, Sabi Ardalan, John Willshire Carrera, Nancy Kelly, Maggie Morgan, Phil Torrey, and Lucy Cummings

“They are the glue that holds the immigration unit of GBLS together… John and Nancy’s expertise in immigration is unrivaled and their dedication to both their clients and students is exceptional among attorneys and mentors.”

“They are tireless advocates for hundreds of noncitizens in the Boston area, supremely gifted supervisors and managing attorneys of HIRC at GBLS, and incredible mentors to many of us at HIRC.”

Congratulations John and Nancy for this extremely well deserved honor!

The high price of freedom

September 10, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Via the Boston Globe

It was the luckiest of breaks, in a life long overdue for one.

Manuel Ordonez-Quino sat in a detention center in El Paso, awaiting deportation to Guatemala. Swept up in the massive raid on a New Bedford factory in 2007, immigration officials said he had agreed to leave the country. 

But some of his fellow detainees told lawyers that was impossible. Ordonez-Quino was deaf, they said. An indigenous Maya, he spoke only Quiché, not English or Spanish. He could not have understood what was happening to him, let alone agreed to it. So John Willshire-Carrera and Nancy Kelly of Greater Boston Legal Services and the Harvard Refugee Program took on his case.

That one stroke of good fortune will change not only Ordonez-Quino’s life, but many others. 

Read the full story here. 

HIRC plays key role in landmark decision recognizing domestic violence as grounds for asylum

August 27, 2014 / / 0 Comments

HLSVia HLS News

The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) issued a ground-breaking decision yesterday that recognized domestic violence as a basis for asylum. The court’s decision in Matter of A-R-C-G- reflects years of work by the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program (HIRC) and other advocates around the country who have pushed for the recognition of gender-based asylum claims. HIRC authored a critical amicus curiae brief in the case, on behalf of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the preeminent immigration bar association.

The court’s decision will have a profound impact on future asylum cases involving women fleeing not only violence in the home, but also other types of violence when that harm is related to their gender, said Deborah Anker, Clinical Professor at Harvard Law School and Director of HIRC. “We have won many cases of women fleeing domestic violence at the immigration court and asylum office and changed the institutional culture at that level, but yesterday’s decision from the BIA finally establishes these principles as formal binding precedent,” she said.

According to Anker, yesterday’s decision is critical in recognizing that under U.S. law gender violence and gender-based persecution can form the basis of an asylum claim as the BIA first laid the foundation for 25 years ago; in its seminal case Matter of Acosta the Board held that gender is an immutable characteristic that fits within the “membership in a particular social group” ground of the “refugee” definition in U.S. and international law. Anker emphasized that gender broadly should permeate interpretations of all aspects of the refugee definition.

The landmark case was brought by a Guatemalan woman (represented by Roy Petty, a prominent Chicago-based immigration lawyer) who suffered years of abuse at the hands of her husband, compounded by the failure and unwillingness of the police in her home country to intervene. The Board reversed a lower court’s ruling that the harm endured by the asylum applicant was the result of random criminal acts and therefore unrelated to a required protected ground.

“Domestic violence is a form of gender-based persecution often perpetrated by men on women that they view as their ‘property’” said John Willshire Carrera, HIRC’s Co-directing Attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services.

Yesterday’s decision demonstrates the success of HIRC’s “bottom-up” approach to legal change. Nearly twenty years ago, HIRC co-authored the U.S. Gender Guidelines, which formally recognized gender-based harm in the asylum context and even recognized domestic violence as a basis of asylum, setting the stage for yesterday’s decision. But it was a long road, and many advocates contributed along the way, said Anker.

According to Nancy Kelly, HIRC’s Co-directing Attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services, it is advocacy on the ground level that provided the major catalyst for the court’s historic decision. “Through persistent and effective direct representation of asylum-seekers, we and others who do this kind of hands-on litigation and advocacy have been able to change the institutional culture, which made this kind of change in the formal law virtually imperative,” said Kelly.

Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program attains major First Circuit victory involving persecution in Guatemala

July 31, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Capture4Via HLS News

In a landmark immigration decision involving a claim of eligibility for asylum, the First Circuit Court of Appeals has issued an opinion finding past persecution in the case of a Mayan man, based on the long history of genocide in Guatemala and related racist mistreatment.

The case, Ordonez-Quino v. Holder, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 14004, originated from the New Bedford, Massachusetts factory raid in 2007, when 361 workers were arrested and sent to Texas without being given an opportunity to obtain counsel or go forward with their removal hearings in the venue in which they resided. The client in the case, Manuel Ordonez-Quino, was represented by Harvard Law School Senior Clinical Instructors John Willshire Carrera and Nancy Kelly, co-managing directors of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic at Greater Boston Legal Services.

In its July 23 decision, the First Circuit panel vacated the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision denying asylum to Ordonez-Quino, a Guatemalan indigenous Mayan Quiché, who was persecuted by the Guatemalan military and others on account of his race and ethnicity.

In its decision, the court overruled the Board of Immigration Appeals and the immigration judge, pointing to the extensive evidence in the record demonstrating that Ordonez-Quino and his community were targeted by government forces and others during the war because of their Mayan identity and their resistance to racist attacks. The court ruled that the cumulative harm Ordonez-Quino had experienced since his childhood constituted past persecution based on his race and ethnicity, and remanded the case for further proceedings.

Immigration advocates, scholars, and practitioners across the country have called the court’s decision “groundbreaking.”

Continue reading the full story here.

Calls grow to consider border kids ‘refugees’

July 15, 2014 / / 0 Comments
Co-Managing Attorney of Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic at Greater Boston Legal Services

Co-Managing Attorney of Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic at Greater Boston Legal Services

Via MSNBC

As more evidence emerges that the Central American children arriving at the U.S border are fleeing horrific violence, lawmakers and advocates are starting to call it as they see it. …

To qualify for asylum, a child must prove they have been persecuted in the past, or risk further threats in the future over their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. It is up to a judge to use their discretion in each case to decide whether gang violence qualifies as persecution. The problem is then exacerbated when it’s a child who appears before an immigration court without full legal representation.

“Gang-related violence has been viewed through a lens that characterizes it as common crime,” explained Nancy Kelly …setting a high bar for those who have been persecuted by gangs. “And for a child who’s trying to go forward without an attorney, it’s next to impossible.”

Read the full article.

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