ITHACA, N.Y. -- The inside of a U.S. jail cell is what he has been looking at for the past 13 months, waiting for his asylum appeal to be ruled on. If he is deported to the Dominican Republic, he could be killed. He believes this because he has been threatened in jail, and thugs have made menacing remarks to his wife. For that reason, too, his name and location are not mentioned in this story.

Two second-year law students, Ralph Mamiya and Kristin McNamara, have taken on his case through a Cornell University Law School course -- the Asylum and Convention Against Torture Appellate Clinic.

Here is their client's story: Entering the United States illegally in the late 1980s, he found employment as a mechanic, got married and raised five children. After Dominican drug dealers moved into his neighborhood, he wanted to do something to protect his children so he volunteered to act as an informant for federal agencies. Based on his testimony, very-high-level drug dealers were convicted and deported. But his identity was revealed to them inadvertently in a document turned over to the defense, leading to the threats on his life.

Despite his record of having helped federal agencies, he ended up in jail after two nonviolent misdemeanor criminal convictions. The convictions and the fact that he had entered the country illegally led to his being jailed and threatened with deportation to his country of origin. He had good reason to believe he would be identified and killed if repatriated, so he requested asylum. An immigration judge denied his plea, and he remains in jail until an administrative appeals board reviews the case.

Law lecturer Estelle McKee and adjunct professor of law Stephen Yale-Loehr have been co-teaching the asylum clinic for the past three years. The course is always oversubscribed. "It's crucial for a law school to offer such a course," said McKee. "It's a chance for students to learn about complex legal issues, fine-tune their research and legal analysis skills, and learn how to speak and work directly with a client." It also matters because the students serve the client population with the fewest rights, "not even the right to a court-appointed attorney. Many do not speak English. They often don't understand why they are being held and are terrified about being sent back to their native countries," she said.

"Imagine trying to make your case without knowledge of the law or the language," said McNamara.

"Students have been clamoring for more clinical experience in law schools, and immigration and asylum law has become a passionate topic among law students," commented Yale-Loehr. "The course is especially timely because Congress has just passed a law that makes it harder for immigrants to qualify for asylum."

Said Mamiya, "The course is a great educational opportunity for law students because we learn about complex legal issues and get to work on actual cases affecting someone's life." He is especially interested in asylum law because it "incorporates human rights and is fairly revolutionary stuff. It is modeled on international refugee laws -- although the U.S. has interpreted them more strictly than some other nations have -- but the language is still there." Among the grounds for asylum protection is persecution based on political opinion or being a member of a religious or social group.

"A client's credibility to a judge is very important in getting a favorable judgment," noted Mamiya. "In our case the judge in the initial hearing did find our client credible but didn't see informants as a social group," -- rejecting the client's defense. But Mamiya and McNamara found other cases where informants were held to be a social group by the courts -- and are basing some of their appeal on those findings. "We have made some strong arguments, without a doubt," said Mamiya. They filed their brief this month with the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is expected to rule on the case shortly. 

Most of the cases that the students work on, usually in teams of two, come through the Board of Immigration Appeals pro bono project, which is run by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc. (CLINIC). Clients must be deemed "meritorious" asylum seekers who did not have an attorney in their original immigration hearing and now need help appealing a decision.

The students spend two-thirds of the course learning the ins and outs of asylum and immigration law, ethical and confidentiality issues and how to interview clients and work with interpreters for non-English speakers. Early in the semester they also begin working on their cases. "We draft our briefs, workshop each other's briefs, offer suggestions to make them stronger, more persuasive," explained Mamiya. When he and McNamara were building their case for the jailed Dominican, they spoke with their client weekly over the phone and met with him in person.

McNamara said she found the clinic experience "a lot of work, intense but incredibly rewarding. For the first time I felt that I could do something good with all this education." Both she and Mamiya are committed to continuing doing pro bono legal work throughout their law careers as a result of their experience in the course, they said.

McKee says she finds teaching the course doubly rewarding. "The students are fantastic, and I can see the enthusiasm build in them" as the semester progresses. Said Yale-Loehr, "They know they are doing important work, even saving someone's life, if they are successful."