In The Media

Students helping students: new tenants’ rights program

This week, the Temple News highlighted a new program that grew out of work by students in our Access to Justice Clinic. “Temple Law students help fellow Owls navigate renter rights and housing concerns” offers an in-depth look at the new service.

The Center’s Access to Justice Clinic focuses on the justice gap — the that many Americans lack access to help with basic legal problems. A little-known aspect of the gap involves college and university students, surprising numbers of whom — especially at large institutions such as Temple — face significant challenges involving housing and food security, access to benefits and other basic needs.

Unfortunately, students often lack the background to recognize legal issues, much less to know how to get help with them. And yet housing instability, inadequate access to food, and the like, if unaddressed, can drastically impair students’ ability to focus on their studies and achieve educational success.

We began to investigate this issue several years ago, aided by research from the Hope Center for Student Basic Needs (a national project based at Temple Medical School). Ultimately, our students developed a proposal for ways in which Temple could offer legal information and referrals in key areas. And as a first step, our students took it upon themselves to create a pilot program in which they offered information to other Temple students about their rights as tenants.

It took some time for Temple students to find out about the program, but now, a couple of years later, it’s better known. The program’s location, in the newly expanded Christopher and Julie Barnett Essential Needs Hub, has helped. And as the Temple News explains, the program is a win for two groups of students: undergraduates and graduate students who need help with housing challenges, and law students who are putting their skills to work for their peers. Down the road, we hope to find a way to expand the subject matter to other “essential needs.”

Moshannon Valley Processing Center

Today, the Social Justice Lawyering Clinic (SJLC) publishes In the Shadow of the Valley: The Unnecessary Confinement and Dehumanizing Conditions of People in Immigration Detention at Moshannon Valley Processing Center. This report is the first to comprehensively investigate conditions at Moshannon, the largest facility in the Northeast that detains immigrants who are awaiting the processing of their deportation cases. It is written by Cristina Isabel de Arana (’24), Alex Leone (‘25), and Bianca Taipe (’25), law students in the SJLC.

The report is based on interviews conducted by a coalition of community-based organizations, law school clinics, and legal nonprofits who made site visits to the newly opened detention facility in Centre County, Pennsylvania in 2023. People who are detained at Moshannon are being held under punitive, inhumane, and dangerous conditions. They have tightly controlled schedules, live in a “pod” with 60-70 other people, wear brightly colored jumpsuits, and are restricted from accessing the outside world. Further, people at Moshannon have reported issues ranging from the inability to get medical care to physical and psychological abuse by staff. Despite Moshannon’s “conversion” into an immigration detention facility, it operates more like the former federal prison that it once was.

Immigration detention facilities like Moshannon, which cost millions of dollars per month to operate, have not created a fairer, safer, or more efficient immigration system. Instead, detaining immigrants is contrary to this country’s ideals of fairness, freedom, and opportunity. Rather than piecemeal reforms for an already broken system, the government needs to consider alternatives, such as community-based case management systems that can work with people to screen, process, and ensure their attendance at immigration court. For this reason, the report calls for the closure of Moshannon.

See news coverage of the report on WHYY, States’ Newsroom, and Telemundo.

Link to PDF

A Sheller Center First

In a first for the Sheller Center, clinic students have worked with the Philadelphia DA’s Office to assist with the prosecution of labor crimes. Carolina Fernandez (’25), Ingrid Lopez Martinez (’24), Lucas Masin-Moyer (’24), Drew Perkoski (’25), represented a group of workers who worked for a moving company called EJ Relocations LLC. They alleged that the employer failed to pay their wages and threatened them to prevent them from making legal claims for their wages. Assistant District Attorney Maria DiGeorge (‘21), a Temple Law alum and a former Sheller Center clinic student, leads the prosecution against the principals of the company, who were recently charged with intimidation of witnesses, conspiracy, and involuntary servitude.

Protecting Immigrants in Need of Long-Term Medical Care

In late September, Philadelphia City Councilmember Jim Harrity introduced a bill seeking to end medical deportation in the city by hospitals. Three Temple Law students in the Social Justice Lawyering Clinic, Sarah Hampton (’22), Livia Luan (’23), and Adalberto Rosado (’23), worked along with the Free Migration Project to draft this ordinance ensuring that ill, injured, or elderly uninsured patients will not be deported to their country of origin against their will due to financial or language barriers. Check out this Philly Inquirer article that has more about this practice and how this bill will assist this endangered population.

Latest update: On December 14, 2023, the bill passed 14-1 in the final session of City Council for the year.

Child Abuse Registry Disproportionately Harms Black Workers and Families

Today, the Sheller Center, along with Penn Law School, released a report tracing the racial harms of the Registry. The report, titled Pathways to Poverty: How the ChildLine and Abuse Registry Disproportionately Harms Black Workers and Families, summarizes a year-long investigation by students finding that Black Pennsylvanians are more likely to be reported for child abuse, be placed on the Registry, and lose a job as a result. Further information can be found in our press release and the subsequent coverage with WITF, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Philadelphia Inquirer.

Let’s end lead poisoning

Philly has taken some steps to protect children from the disastrous effects of lead exposure, but there’s more to do. In an op-ed in today’s Inquirer, Justice Lab students Liz F. Torres, Chris Lin and Tony Sierzega, who worked this semester with Community Legal Services, make the case for four measures that could make a dramatic difference.