One of the required field trips for this course involves attending an asylum hearing in immigration court. These hearings should give us a sense of both court procedure and substantive immigration law in action. I ll circulate sign-up sheets. Hearings are sometimes postponed or canceled unexpectedly, so it s better to sign up for the earliest hearing that you can attend conveniently and save later dates for backups. I expect to start discussing immigration court procedure on November 4, and refugees and asylum on November 16.
Hearings typically last two or three hours.
Plan to stay for at least two hours if the hearing lasts that long. After that, feel free to leave before it ends. To minimize our effect on the hearings, each group is limited in size. If you would really like to attend a hearing that already has a full group, please see me and maybe we can work out a trade. Background reading on asylum law and procedure Before your hearing, please read as background pages 1019-32 in the casebook.