In the Media

“Immigrants do not uproot their lives and cross state borders to access health care, even at critical life moments, such as pregnancy and childhood development, and even if health care benefits across state lines are more comprehensive,” Jonathan Miller of the Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General in Boston and Elora Mukherjee of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School in New York City write in an editorial accompanying the study.
[Note: This article appeared in multiple media outlets worldwide.]

By Jamal Greene and Elora Mukherjee
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on whether President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security acted lawfully when it rescinded DACA in 2017. While there are obvious differences between slavery and deportation, the way antebellum courts in free states thought about the security of the state’s brown-skinned residents is instructive.

By Clara Long and Elora Mukherjee
Over the course of this summer, the American people -- across party lines -- have shown that they reject the hate and dehumanization of immigrants that appears to have motivated last weekend's mass shooting in El Paso. . . . But the test is whether legislators will use the power of the purse to make a real difference for children by keeping families together and shifting the focus away from detention. With senators and representatives home for the August recess, the American people have a pivotal opportunity to demand change now.

To understand more about this crisis, I called Elora Mukherjee, a professor at Columbia Law School and the director of the school’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. She has been working on the Flores settlement, an agreement that outlines how the U.S. government must care for unaccompanied migrant children, since 2007. Mukherjee has represented and interviewed multiple children and families. She was at the Clint detention facility in Texas last week, along with a group of lawyers and doctors, to interview the children held there.