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Profs & Pints DC: Trump and Asylum Law
Profs and Pints DC presents: “Trump and Asylum Law,” an analysis of the new administration’s immigration crackdown in the context of national and international law governing the treatment of refugees, with Paul Grussendorf, former director of the Immigration Clinic at the George Washington University Law School and author of My Trials: Inside America’s Deportation Factories.
As he did the first time he was in office, President Donald Trump has been calling for controversial changes to U.S. policy and procedure dealing with immigrants, including those who request political asylum. This time around he has issued sweeping executive orders requiring mass deportations, the closure of our nation’s asylum program, and the housing of 30,000 undocumented immigrants at Guantanamo Bay.
Get a crash course on asylum law and its history, as well as how the administration’s actions comport with legal precedent, with Paul Grussendorf, who has spent much of his lifetime handling the cases of people fleeing persecution and other forms of harm.
Along with overseeing the immigration law clinic at George Washington University for a decade, Grussendorf he has been an immigration judge in Philadelphia and San Francisco, a refugee officer for both the U.S. refugee program and the United Nations, and a supervisory asylum officer with U.S. Citizenship and Naturalization Agency. He speaks from a perspective that is both rooted in legal scholarship and experience working with people seeking a new life in a new country.
Grussendorf will walk us through the legal and historic origins of the 1951 U.N. Convention on the Status of Refugees and our nation’s own Refugee Act of 1980, which codified the United Nation’s principles and refugee definition into U.S. law.
From there he’ll examine both the legality of President Trump’s orders and the practicalities of trying to implement them on our own soil and at Guantanamo Bay.
You’ll emerge from the talk with both a firm understanding of the context for today’s immigration debate and a sense of what awaits those who arrive in the U.S. or other countries seeking to escape harm. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image: Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany aboard the St. Louis, which the U.S. government turned away in 1939. About a fourth of the ship’s passengers are believed to have died in Nazi death camps after its return to Europe. (National Archives and Records Administration.)
Event Links
Tickets: https://go.evvnt.com/2902435-0
