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Morales, Suzi

MARYLAND CAREY LAW MAGAZINE Fall 202111
LAND OF
OPPORTUNITY
By Suzi Morales
 
New Chacón Center for Immigrant Justice expands opportunities for students to 
prepare for careers in immigration law.
1
Morales: A Land of Opportunity
Published by DigitalCommons@U  Carey Law,
MARYLAND CAREY LAW MAGAZINEFall 2021 12
law. “When you see something is 
unfair, you have to be willing to 
give it all you have to make it 
right,” she says, “even if it seems 
impossible.” She chose Maryland 
Carey Law because of the school’s 
Immigration Clinic, a hub for 
expertise and training in 
immigration law for the past 20 
years.  
 
As a third-year student in the clinic, 
Abreu Jimenez had the opportunity 
to represent clients like Dolores 
(name changed to protect her 
KIRIA ABREU Jimenez ’21 came to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic as a 
child. Now a citizen, she says 
she doesn’t take her status lightly, 
noting that some of her immigrant 
friends’ situations are not as stable, 
which makes them vulnerable 
to having their worlds utterly 
disrupted.
 
That is why Abreu Jimenez was 
drawn to a career in immigration 
identity) who immigrated from 
Jamaica when she was a child. 
Dolores served in the U.S. Army 
for seven years, earning various 
service awards but also suffering 
trauma which led to substance 
abuse and culminated in a criminal 
conviction. Facing deportation, 
Dolores turned to the Immigration 
Clinic for legal help. Abreu 
Jimenez assisted her with a 
petition to overturn the conviction 
and left no stone unturned to 
ensure the possibility of 
citizenship (now pending) for the 
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Maryland Carey Law, Vol. 2021 [], Art. 8
https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mcl/vol2021/iss1/8
MARYLAND CAREY LAW MAGAZINE Fall 202113
60-year-old. “My experience with 
the clinic was like no other,” says 
Abreu Jimenez, who was awarded 
the Maryland Carey Law Ward 
Kershaw Advocacy Award upon 
her 2021 graduation.  
 
Now, thanks to a $5 million gift 
from biotech entrepreneurs Marco 
and Debbie Chacón, the law 
school’s renowned immigration 
program has expanded to become 
the Chacón Center for Immigrant 
Justice, offering a dramatic 
increase in opportunities for 
students like Abreu Jimenez to 
gain experience in Immigration 
Court and in legislative and 
appellate advocacy. 
 
“We are deeply grateful to Marco 
and Debbie Chacón for their 
generous and transformative gift,” 
says Maryland Carey Law Dean 
Donald Tobin. “The Chacón 
Center will establish a permanent 
immigration law center at the law 
school, ensuring that advocacy by 
students will continue to make a 
difference in our immigrant 
community.” 
 
Center adds Federal Appellate 
Clinic 
 
The Chacón gift enables Maryland 
Carey Law to hire a tenure-track 
professor who will establish a new 
Federal Appellate Impact 
Litigation Clinic as part of the 
Chacón Center. Because 
immigration appeals bypass 
federal district court and advance 
directly to federal courts of appeal, 
students handling Maryland 
Immigration Court appeals will 
have the opportunity to argue 
before the United States Court of 
Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. 
 
“It’s exciting for our students to get 
this kind of opportunity,” says 
Professor Maureen Sweeney, 
director of the Immigration Clinic 
and now of the Chacón Center, 
adding that Maryland Carey Law 
is one of just a few law schools in 
the country offering an appellate 
clinic. “It’s unusual for students to 
have the opportunity to work at 
the federal appellate level, but 
they’ll be right in there writing 
briefs, making novel arguments to 
the court, and in some cases 
should be able to actually argue 
the cases at the court in Richmond, 
Va.” 
 
Students to have additional 
experience challenging criminal 
convictions 
 
Before joining the Immigration 
Clinic as a staff attorney, now 
associate director of the Chacón 
Center Gabriela Kahrl ’08 had 
been an assistant public defender 
at the Maryland Office of the 
Public Defender. Many of her 
clients there faced deportation for 
criminal convictions, often for 
minor offenses.  
 
Maryland Carey Law hired Kahrl 
for the Immigration Clinic in the 
midst of a groundswell of interest 
from students, but her position 
wasn’t permanent before the 
Chacón endowment. Now, the 
center will be able to provide 
students with further chances to 
challenge criminal convictions 
affecting their clients’ immigration 
status and address the scarcity of 
Maryland lawyers trained in the 
legal nuances at the intersection of 
criminal and immigration law. 
 
“[Students] will have the 
opportunity to do post-conviction 
and coram nobis (a legal challenge 
to a conviction because of an 
underlying constitutional or 
fundamental error) work in the 
state of Maryland, which is a 
critical part of providing holistic 
representation, especially to those 
who have been affected by racial 
profiling,” Kahrl says. A petition 
for coram nobis requests an order 
to vacate a conviction, for reasons 
such as ineffective assistance of 
counsel. While minor convictions 
may not severely impact the lives 
of U.S. citizens, Kahrl says they 
often lead to deportation for 
immigrants. 
 
Broad advocacy includes 
legislative initiatives 
 
Additionally, the center plans to 
expand its current efforts in the 
Maryland legislature. 
 
In the 2020-2021 academic year, 
Sweeney says the Immigration 
Clinic’s legislative efforts focused 
on the “technical glitch” that 
allows Maryland Probation Before 
Judgment cases to trigger 
deportation and other 
consequences, as well as an 
initiative for public funding for 
access to counsel in deportation 
cases. This work relied on 
temporary funding; the Chacón 
gift provides sustained support for 
such projects. 
 
“We are trying to impress upon 
students to be broad in their 
advocacy,” says Kahrl, who heads 
the policy work at the center. 
“When bad laws are on the books, 
we must make our voices heard in 
the General Assembly and 
persuade our representatives to 
help.” 
 
Financial support for students 
 
Another way the Chacón 
endowment increases 
opportunities for students is by 
establishing the Chacón 
Scholarship, which will enable 
Maryland Carey Law to recruit the 
best and brightest students 
Marco Chacòn
3
Morales: A Land of Opportunity
Published by DigitalCommons@U  Carey Law,
MARYLAND CAREY LAW MAGAZINEFall 2021 14
interested in immigration law. The 
first Chacón Scholar is Rafael 
Moreno ’24, a member of the fall 
2021 entering class.   
 
There is also financial support for 
spring break service trips to 
locations including detention 
centers in remote areas where 
representation is scarce. Sweeney 
says she is eager to resume the 
spring break trips (suspended for 
COVID) because they offer 
another avenue for students to 
experience real-world advocacy 
even in their first year of law 
school. “Students have a 
theoretical interest in the area,” 
she says, “but once they really 
start talking to clients, that’s when 
it comes alive for them.” 
 
Holistic approach to immigrant 
experience 
 
In addition to curriculum 
expansion, the inception of the 
Chacón Center has allowed Kahrl 
and Sweeney, along with the 
Chacón family, to consider how to 
shape overarching attitudes toward 
immigration in America, which 
have become central in the heated 
national dialogue. 
 
“Our country is built on a lot of that 
ingenuity, that bravery that it takes 
to come to a new place, learn a 
new language, or just live in a 
different culture and work really 
hard,” Kahrl says. 
 
Kahrl’s desire to help immigrants 
was influenced by her mother, who 
immigrated to the United States 
from South America. “It’s 
interesting to grow up the child of 
an immigrant because you feel like 
you have one foot in your 
mother’s country and in your 
mother’s identity, or your 
heritage’s identity, and then one 
foot here,” Kahrl recalls. “You feel 
a little bit displaced and like 
you’re not really sure how to be an 
American or what being an 
American is.” 
 
One aspect of changing the 
narrative around the immigrant 
experience is “helping clients to 
exercise their rights and 
responsibilities as citizens,” says 
Sweeney, who is looking into 
developing citizenship workshops. 
 
“One thing I have realized over the 
last five years, particularly, is that 
the power of the vote is the only 
durable protection for immigrants,” 
Sweeney notes. “Until their voice 
is heard in the same way as 
anyone else’s, they are vulnerable.” 
 
Student advocacy provides 
foundation for practice 
 
Even for students who do not 
pursue immigration law in their 
careers, the center will provide a 
valuable basis for future litigation 
and other skills.  
 
“Many law students graduate 
lacking crucial practical skills and 
good ethical habits,” says Michelle 
Méndez ’08, an Immigration 
Clinic alumna and current director 
of the Defending Vulnerable 
Populations Program at the 
Catholic Legal Immigration 
Network, Inc. in Silver Spring. “I 
wasn’t one of them, thanks to the 
Immigration Clinic.” 
 
In the clinic, Méndez says she 
learned to break the case down, 
from asking detailed questions and 
follow up during the intake 
interview to dealing with sensitive 
topics.  
 
“I’m a big believer that the way to 
learn to be a lawyer is to be a 
lawyer,” says Sweeney. 
 
According to Kahrl, the best part 
of her job is seeing students take 
on challenging advocacy projects 
and learn their capabilities. “They 
do such remarkable work and 
come so far in such a short period 
of time,” she says. “They are 
usually so much more confident at 
the end of clinic than they were 
when they started. It’s a joy to see.” 
 
Now, with the transformative gift 
from the Chacón family, students 
will have expanded opportunities 
to develop that confidence and get 
top-level preparation to pursue 
immigrant justice for generations 
to come. 
 
“New generations of students, 
jurists, and advocates will help to 
restore the promise of ‘equal 
justice for all’,” the Chacóns wrote 
in a joint statement when the 
center opened last spring, “and 
encourage the full participation of 
new immigrants in society who 
are following in the footsteps of 
previous waves of immigrants 
seeking the American dream.” ■
Inaugural Chacón Scholar
Rafael Moreno ’24
“I am honored to be named the first 
Chacón Scholar. The funding for the 
center enables students such as myself 
to pursue our passion for assisting 
immigrants facing the complicated 
legal landscape while working to 
create a more equitable and just 
immigration system.”
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Maryland Carey Law, Vol. 2021 [], Art. 8
https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mcl/vol2021/iss1/8


A Land of Opportunity

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