<p>The federal immigration court is located in a large cinder block building tucked away on a side road, in a quiet industrial park off Route 30 in York, PA.&nbsp; A person looking at the building would have a hard time distinguishing it from the York County Prison.&nbsp; The immigration court is housed, in fact, in the York County Prison.</p>
<p>Inside the cinder block walls of the prison, immigrants are detained and federal immigration judges make decisions that will change the course of an immigrant&rsquo;s life.</p>
<p>Professor Jill Family regularly takes her immigration law class to sessions at the court to help them gain a real-life perspective about immigration court proceedings.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Visiting an immigration detention center is often a transformative experience for my students,&rdquo; Professor Family said. &ldquo;Seeing the reality of immigration detention- that it really is no different than criminal incarceration- informs my students that representing detained foreign nationals provides for a lifetime of meaningful work.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The students watched a handful of cases where the U.S. government has charged a foreign national as removable (deportable) from the United States.&nbsp; The students saw &ldquo;master calendar hearings,&rdquo; which are shorter, preliminary hearings when the immigration judge decides what issues in the case need more in depth attention and whether a foreign national will be detained while he or she waits for a longer &ldquo;individual hearing.&rdquo; &nbsp;The students watched the proceedings from an observation room in the court. The observation room is separated from the court room by a glass partition and seats in the observation room face the judge&rsquo;s bench. The detained foreign nationals appeared in court in orange prison jumpsuits, often without an attorney.&nbsp; Immigration Judge Walter Durling presided over the docket and an attorney from the Department of Homeland Security represented the government. &nbsp;.</p>
<p>Judge Durling&rsquo;s legal assistant, who is a law student at Widener Law Commonwealth, is Dwight Quichua.&nbsp; Quichua is an extended division student who attends law school in the evenings, and is a candidate for graduation in the spring.</p>
<p>Quichua said that he does have an interest in pursuing immigration law after graduation, and his experiences as a legal assistant in the immigration court have helped him to focus his interests and to gain a greater understanding of immigration law.&nbsp; &ldquo;I have a passion for immigration law,&rdquo; he said. &nbsp;</p>
<p>For some of the law students, this was their first experience with immigration court, and it proved to be an eye-opening and moving experience.</p>
<p>&ldquo;It was surprising and somewhat difficult to watch some of the more sympathetic deportation proceedings, one of which stuck with me even on the drive home.&nbsp; This case&nbsp;involved a young lady&nbsp;who was ordered to be deported and had come to&nbsp;America&nbsp;for opportunity, as her family back home was very poor and opportunity was limited,&rdquo; said 2L law student Gregory Seiders. &ldquo;The judge was sympathetic and even told her he wished there was something he could do.&rdquo;&nbsp;</p>
<p>Margaret Nollau, a 2L law student, found that observing the immigration proceedings helped the material she was studying in class come to life.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I understand the material better now because I have seen the proceedings play out in court. Instead of visualizing what the process looks like, I now have memories to attach to the information,&rdquo; said Nollau. &nbsp;&ldquo;It will help me in the future as a lawyer because I will know exactly what to expect in an immigration proceeding and can prepare accordingly.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Professor Family makes it a point to remind her students that law is more than just theory; that it also makes huge real-world impacts.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Immigration law is all about people, so it is important to inject humanity into the course,&rdquo; she said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Part of that happens in the classroom, where we consistently discuss the law&rsquo;s effect on individuals, but a field trip to immigration court is an even more powerful way to observe the interaction between law and people&rsquo;s lives.&rdquo;</p>