Due Process Denied: Grads Fight for New Bedford Workers

Northeastern law graduates are leading an effort to ensure that hundreds of immigrant workers arrested in March in a massive raid at a New Bedford factory will remain in the US until their fate is decided by a federal appeals court.

The federal government asserts that the immigrants, many from Guatemala and El Salvador, are deportable. But lawyers for the workers, including John Willshire-Carrera ’85 and Nancy Kelly ’84 of Greater Boston Legal Services, allege in a lawsuit that many don’t speak English, were denied access to lawyers and were transported quickly to Texas in order to deny their constitutional rights.

The controversial raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement was part of Operation Endgame, which seeks to remove 12 million undocumented workers from the US by 2012. On March 6, federal agents rounded up nearly 400 workers at the Michael Bianco Inc. factory, where they sewed backpacks and vests for the military. Immigrants’ advocates decried the raid as a humanitarian crisis, noting that pregnant women, nursing mothers and caretakers of young children were arrested; some have since been released. The factory owner and several managers have been indicted on charges of hiring illegal workers.

Lawyers for the workers note that many may be entitled to remain in the US, but didn’t know their rights and weren’t allowed to speak to lawyers before their deportation hearings. The suit, which seeks to have plaintiffs returned to Massachusetts so they can receive adequate representation, was dismissed in May before the federal district court in Boston and is on appeal. Lawyers have also filed a federal class action seeking back wages for the workers, alleging that factory owners avoided paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime.

Other Northeastern graduates and co-op employers representing the workers include adjunct professor Harvey Kaplan, whose Boston immigration law firm, Kaplan, O’Sullivan & Friedman, is handling the case pro bono; and GBLS staff lawyers Hema Sarangapani ’05, Ingrid Nava ’03, Jason Corral ’04 and Anne Mackin ’81. — Elaine McArdle

Summer 2007 | News Briefs

Professor Baker and one of his students joined Thai and other activists at a demonstration, including a “die-in,” in front of Abbott’s research center in Worcester.

Negotiation Class Explores AIDS Drug Dilemma in Thailand

Thai activists brought the vivid reality of the clash between pharmaceutical companies and those who are desperate for their drugs to Professor Brook Baker’s Negotiation class in April. The Thai group joined students for a discussion about an intellectual property dispute between Thailand, which has issued a compulsory license on an important AIDS medicine, Kaletra, and Abbott, the patent holder, which has retaliated by withdrawing a heat-stable form of the medicine from the drug registration process. The class was in the middle of a four-week simulation trying to negotiate a settlement of the dispute. As a group, students reported that the visit increased the immediacy of the dispute and heightened their interest in its resolution. Professor Baker shared some of the students’ preparatory work with the Thai activists and Thai negotiators and also wrote three op-eds in Thai newspapers in support of the compulsory license.

Globe Reporter Leads Legal Journalism Roundtable

Sacha Pfeiffer knows lawyers. She knows the firms they work in, the courtrooms they inhabit and the nuances of their profession.

As a reporter for The Boston Globe and freelance journalist, Pfeiffer has investigated and written on legal matters for almost a dozen years. During her early years at the paper, Pfeiffer won a Pulitzer for her work as one of the reporters who broke the sex-abuse scandal that shook the foundation of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston.

In January 2007, Pfeiffer led a legal journalism roundtable discussion at the School of Law. Her audience included students in Professor Michael Meltsner’s seminar, Writing About Law.

Students were treated to Pfeiffer’s anecdotes and frank opinions. The exchange ranged from the specifics of newspaper reporting to the vagaries of law firm culture and the substance of legal education.

“Sacha Pfeiffer was so easy to talk to and so shrewd in her description of her law beat that for a moment I feared this group of overachieving law students was going to interrogate her about how to get into a graduate school of journalism,” said Meltsner. — Andrew DeVoogd ’07