Lisa Bliss (left) and Emily Ngara, GSU College of Law.

Georgia State University College of Law is starting the state’s first immigration law clinic, thanks to a $300,000 grant from the Kresge Foundation.

GSU Law has hired Emily Torstveit Ngara to lead the new clinic, which will start taking clients in January.

“There is a huge amount of need for legal representation of immigrants here–especially for removal defense,” said Ngara, previously the director of Hofstra University’s deportation defense clinic.

Georgia has a backlog of 31,700 removal cases—as deportation cases are termed—up from 25,000 in FY 2018, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. Nearly all of them are in Atlanta.

The clinic will focus on deportation defense for immigrants facing ICE removal orders and assist those whose Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or temporary protected status has been rescinded.

“A large number of those will likely be asylum cases, given the current situation,” Ngara said.

The asylum grant rate from the Atlanta Immigration Court is one of the lowest in the country, which makes providing legal representation to those facing deportation even more critical, Ngara said.

The Kresge Foundation, based in Troy, Michigan, asked GSU Law to apply for the grant, which is for $300,000 over two years, said Lisa Bliss, the law school’s associate dean of experiential education and clinical programs. Bliss is also co-director of GSU’s Health Law Partnership Legal Services Clinic.

GSU Law students have wanted to have an immigration legal clinic for a long time, Bliss added, and now the Kresge grant has made it possible.

“There is no other immigration clinic in any school in Georgia—and very few in the Southeast,” Bliss said. “Atlanta is an important place to have that kind of clinic.”

She noted that GSU Law is highly ranked for its experiential and clinical programs. “Kresge recognized that GSU Law would be a good home for that,” Bliss said.

Up to 16 law students will be able to work with the immigration law clinic per semester, Ngara said. They will work in pairs with Ngara and another supervising attorney.

Removal defense will be the focus, she said, but those cases can take a long time to be adjudicated, so she hopes also to partner with organizations that perform bond hearings at detention facilities.

“It’s an opportunity for students to get into court. Those cases have much shorter turnaround–and it can make a huge difference to someone in immigration detention,” she said.

Ngara earned a law degree in 2010 from the University of Pennsylvania and holds an LLM in clinical education from the University of the District of Columbia. She has worked in immigration law clinics at both those law schools as well as the University of Baltimore School of Law.

Ngara said she’s meeting with people in Atlanta’s immigrant communities and local nonprofits to learn how best to use the new clinic’s resources.

Atlanta legal nonprofits focused on immigrant representation include the Georgia Asylum and Immigration Network, Kids in Need of Defense, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the Latin American Association and Catholic Charities.

The clinic will give students the chance to interview clients, perform fact investigations, prepare evidence, draft briefs and motions, appear in court, make legal arguments and work with experts, Ngara said.

This story has been updated to reflect that the Kresge Foundation grant to GSU Law is for $300,000 over two years.