By ANDRES VIGLUCCI

Herald Staff Writer
Miami Herald
Saturday, October 19, 1996
Used by permission.

Pamela Entzel, a University of Miami law student, didn't come all the way from South Dakota just to sit in a classroom for three years. Not when so many people in South Florida could use her help right now.

So she plunged into a new program at school, and soon found herself lending assistance to parentless Haitian children and other desperate refugees. It was, for Entzel, 24, a crash course in real life.

"Those are such incredibly gut-wrenching cases," Entzel said. "They went through horrible things. And yet in South Florida, cases like that are a dime a dozen."

At a time when immigrants are increasingly unpopular and a new law will make life tougher for asylum-seekers, Entzel and about 50 UM law students have banded together in the school's first immigration project.

Entirely student-run, the project is designed to help fill one of South Florida's biggest legal lacks - free help for refugees - as it furthers the students' education outside the classroom, especially in the often-grim realities of immigration and refugee law.

"For students, it's an eye-opener to see how immigration actually works," said Sam Kaufman, a second-year law student who helped found the project. "Just yesterday, one student who went to Krome told me, 'Wow, it was shocking' He didn't realize it is, for all intents and purposes, a prison."

The students - many of whom speak Creole and/or Spanish - volunteer at nonprofit groups that work with immigrants, including the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center and Church World Service. Most do not receive academic credit for participating.

Just weeks after going into full swing, and training sessions on interview techniques and proper filling-out of asylum applications, they are representing 23 asylum-seekers under the supervision of lawyers at the agencies.

Every Saturday, one group of students visits the Krome Detention Center in West Dade to interview detainees who have requested legal help. Though detainees get a list of agencies that provide free or low-cost assistance those groups are typically so overwhelmed by demand that they can take few new cases. Until the students began their weekly visits, no one was going to visit unrepresented Krome detainees.

"I've been impressed by their commitment and compassion and the thoroughness of their work," said Rebecca Sharpless, staff attorney at the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center's office in Homestead. "They've really filled a gap. No nonprofit is making an effort to serve detainees, because we don't have the resources."

The Krome group recently took its first case: a woman who was raped after authorities in her home country came to her house looking for her husband. The students hope to get her released from Krome on parole, then handle her asylum case.

Ultimately, the students hope to litigate a case in immigration court, said another project founder, Joshua Bratter.

The students will contend with an immigration bill recently signed into law by President Clinton that creates new obstacles for asylum-seekers, said Cheryl Little, executive director of the advocacy center.

Refugees must now apply for asylum within one year of entry into the country, and have less opportunity to appeal. In some cases, they face summary exclusion without recourse in the courts. And in many cases, they now also face mandatory detention, making it more difficult to win release on parole, Little said.

"There's no question that larger numbers of people are being detained and for longer periods of time," she said.

The UM immigration project is not the first in Dade. The St. Thomas University law school has been running a similar program since 1992 in which 18 to 25 students a year represent clients under the supervision of professor

But students and legal advocates say the need still far outstrips the help available.

"I wasn't prepared for how overwhelmed the agencies are and how little time there is," said Entzel. the UM student from South Dakota.

Take, for instance, the first cases she became involved in - those of unaccompanied Haitian children who were released from the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Volunteer lawyers worked for months to get the children released on parole. Now parole is expiring, but many of the children, approaching adulthood, still don't have asylum.

"There was so much effort into getting them out of Guantanamo," Entzel said. "Many of them don't realize that it was just a small step. Those are kids who want to get on with their lives, who want to go to college, join the military. But they might fall through the cracks."

Entzel said she found it hard to reconcile the often hurried, makeshift nature of actual practice - and the government's sometime disregard of refugees' rights -with the rational, fair and orderly procedures taught in the school's immigration class.

"It's incredibly frustrating to sit in that class," she said. "Anything short of going out there and experiencing it doesn't cut it. It was great to finally sit down face to face with a human being with real needs, and be able to do something."

The students have persuaded the UM law school to add a class in asylum and refugee law to the curriculum, to be taught by Kerry Doyle, directing attorney at Church World Service's Haitian Asylum Project.

The UM students say they're also willing to help private attorneys who take asylum cases free of charge. "We 're willing to do the grunt work." Kaufman said.