Immigration Law

Kevin Cope

Kevin Cope’s research applies social science methods to the study of international institutions, migration and political attitudes toward international law. One of Cope’s major research initiatives involves how legal rules affect citizens’ attitudes toward domestic immigration policies. Before coming to the Law School, Cope clerked for three federal judges and practiced government enforcement litigation law in Washington, D.C., with Skadden, Arps, where he handled matters involving treaties, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, immigration law and the World Bank.
 

Amanda Frost

Amanda Frost writes and teaches in the fields of immigration and citizenship law, federal courts and jurisdiction, and judicial ethics. Her scholarship has been cited by over a dozen federal and state courts, and she has been invited to testify on the topics of her articles before both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. Her non-academic writing has been published in The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Slate, USA Today and The American Prospect, and she authors the “Academic Round-up” column for SCOTUSblog. In 2019 she was awarded a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies to complete her book, You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers (2021), which was named as a “New & Noteworthy” book by The New York Times Book Review and was shortlisted for the Mark Lynton History Prize.

Nelson Camilo Sánchez León

Camilo Sánchez, who leads the International Human Rights Clinic and co-directs the Human Rights Program, assists the Immigration Program by supervising and mentoring students looking for pro bono opportunities to assist low-income, monolingual Spanish-speaking immigrant communities in the Central Virginia area. He also works on projects applying international human rights law standards to immigration issues. For example, Sánchez and the International Human Rights Law Clinic have assisted the U.N. Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families in recent years. Sánchez is formerly research director of the Center for the Study of Law, Justice, and Society (Dejusticia) and associate professor of law at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogota. In his 15-year legal career, he has worked on cases regarding enforced disappearances in Central America, attacks against human rights defenders in Mexico, and policies for reparations programs in post-conflict countries such as Guatemala, Peru and Colombia.

David A. Martin

As principal deputy general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security from January 2009 to December 2010, and in earlier government service at the Department of State and the Department of Justice (including as general counsel to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1995-98), Professor Emeritus David Martin was closely involved with the Refugee Act of 1980, a major alteration of U.S. asylum procedures in 1995, implementation of the 1996 statutory amendments to the immigration laws, Obama administration reforms of enforcement priorities and the detention system used in connection with immigration removal proceedings, and the federal government’s 2010 lawsuit against Arizona’s restrictive immigration enforcement law. He has published numerous books and articles in scholarly journals, including a leading casebook on immigration and citizenship law, now in its eighth edition.
 

William J. Benos

William J. Benos teaches Immigration Law at the Law School and is a partner with Williams Mullen, an AmLaw 200 law firm with offices in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and the District of Columbia. As founder of the firm’s immigration practice, Benos combines his business and immigration experience to advise international clients on matters involving the cross-border movement of personnel. He has  experience in representing business professionals with nonimmigrant visas, intracompany transfers and investor visas. He assists businesses and individuals with permanent residency matters, including labor certifications, employment-based petitions and investment-based petitions. He also helps businesses with immigration compliance matters such as I-9 programs and ICE inspections.
 

Tanishka V. Cruz

Tanishka V. Cruz supervises and teaches the Immigration Law Clinic at UVA Law through her affiliation with the Legal Aid Justice Center, where for the past two years she has focused on the management of the Virginia Special Immigrant Juvenile Project, an award-winning collaboration between LAJC and pro bono attorneys across the state. The project has saved more than 150 refugee children from likely deportation. She is also an attorney in solo practice at Cruz Law, a Charlottesville-based immigration and family law firm.
 

Sophia Gregg

Sophia Gregg supervises and teaches the Immigration Law Clinic at UVA Law through her work at the Legal Aid Justice Center, which she joined in 2016. She specializes in civil rights and immigration law including “crimmigration,” the intersection between immigration and criminal law. She represents individuals before administrative agencies and immigration, state and federal courts. She also strives to achieve systemic reform through community outreach and education, campaigns for policy change and impact litigation. In addition, Gregg manages the Virginia Special Immigrant Juvenile Project, an award-winning collaboration between LAJC and pro bono attorneys across the state. The SIJ Project assists immigrant children who have been abused, abandoned or neglected obtain legal status in the U.S. 

Curriculum

In addition to the core Immigration Law course that is taught every year, the program frequently offers advanced courses, including Refugee Law and Policy, Citizenship and Group Identity, and other related seminars. Students who want hands-on experience in working with immigrant clients can take the Immigration Law Clinic, which is also offered annually.

The following is a list of courses offered during the current and two previous academic years. Numbers in parentheses indicate which academic year(s) the courses were offered, i.e., 2020-21 is coded (21), 2021-22 is coded (22) and 2022-23 is coded (23). (SC) stands for short course and (YR) stands for yearlong. 

Administrative Law (21,22,23)
Asian Americans and the Law (23)
Border Policy and Politics (22,23)
Foreign Relations Law (21,22,23)
Immigration Law and Policy (21,22,23)
International Human Rights Law (21,22,23)
International Law (21,22,23)
International Law of Migration and Refugees (21)
Labor Law (21,22,23)
Legislation (21,22,23)
National Security Law (21,22,23)
Presidential Powers (21,22)
Racial Justice and Law (21,22,23)

Clinics

Advanced International Human Rights Law Clinic (22,23)
Immigration Law Clinic (YR) (21,22,23)
International Human Rights Law Clinic (21,22,23)

Community Service and Pro Bono Projects

Outside of the classroom, the Immigration Law Program provides students with numerous hands-on learning experiences. 

Afghan Immigrant Project

Coordinated by the Charlottesville-Albemarle Bar Association Volunteer Pro Bono Program, the project deploys students to help Afghan refugees fill out paperwork aimed at reuniting them with family members stranded abroad. Story

The Migrant Farmworker Project 

Run by the student group the Latin American Law Organization, the Migrant Farmworker Project works with the Legal Aid Justice Center's Immigrant Advocacy Program to assist an isolated population often in need of legal counsel. The program represents immigrants and farmworkers throughout the state. Although the center handles mostly employment law cases, it also takes housing and discrimination cases. Student members of the Migrant Farmworker Project visit migrant farm labor camps and inform workers about their rights. The project also seeks to increase awareness about the substandard treatment of immigrant workers and conditions in which they live and work in Virginia. Students do not need to speak Spanish to participate. Story

Immigrant Jail Outreach Project

In conjunction with the Capital Area Immigrants' Rights Coalition, law student volunteers are trained to help CAIR Coalition attorneys in their work at local jails in Virginia housing hundreds of immigrant detainees. Students may assist in know-your-rights presentations, interview detainees and conduct initial case development.

International Refugee Assistance Project 

UVA Law is home to one of 29 student chapters of IRAP, which develops and enforces a set of legal rights for refugees and displaced persons.