About the Center

Our Volunteers

Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P.

Firm locations:  Austin, Dallas, Dubai (UAE), Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Munich, New York, Riyadh, San Antonio, Washington, DC.

Website:  http://www.fulbright.com

About Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P.

In 2005, Fulbright began working closely with the National Center for Refugee and Immigrant Children (The Center) to help immigrant children who enter the United States alone and then attempt to navigate our immigration courts without representation.  John Sullivan, a litigation partner in the Houston office, was deeply moved by the plight of these children.  John, who specializes in commercial litigation and had never before handled an immigration matter, volunteered to serve as the firm’s point person on the project.  Fulbright has not only taken on the cases of several immigrant children, but also hosted the first pro bono attorney training for 100 Houston-area lawyers. Its lawyers are also making regular “Know Your Rights” presentations to children in detention and conducting in-take interviews of children with possible asylum claims.  
 
In recent years, Fulbright has provided significant pro bono legal services to World Trade Center victims, handled death penalty defense cases for foreign nationals under international treaties, represented Guantanamo Bay detainees, helped Native American rights organizations and supported the Lone Star Legal Aid Program, which provides free legal services to more than one million low-income clients in East Texas and southwest Arkansas.

 
A Story of Hope

Last May, John received an email from the Center asking if he could take his first immigration case on an emergency basis.  John agreed, and this would change his life—as well as a handful of other attorneys’ lives—forever.  John and Hannah Sibiski, an appellate specialist with a Harvard pedigree, assembled a team of 10 summer associates to stop the boy’s deportation.

Young Zheng: The Journey To Nowhere

Young’s story is remarkable. Born in violation of China’s one-child law, he became an economic burden and hardship to his parents.  For the one-child law violation, the Chinese government forcibly sterilized his mother.  She later died, and his father remarried.  His stepmother was unkind to him and eventually convinced his father to hire smugglers (“snakeheads”) to send him away. Young’s father promised the snakeheads that the boy would work illegally in the United States and send the money to pay off the smugglers’ compensation. The snakeheads’ fee?  $60,000.

At 14, Young was placed on a plane to Newark with a fake passport and a few English words.

Almost immediately after landing in New Jersey, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) unmasked his documentation papers as bogus. Without delay, DHS interrogated the boy with questions he couldn’t understand, then shipped him off to the Burks County Youth Center in Pennsylvania, where he spent a year before the facility was closed amidst child-abuse scandals.

After more than a year-and-a-half in different U.S. detention centers, Young was finally released to his uncle in Akron, Ohio, where he thrived and became a top high school student, earning a 4.0 grade point average while complying with immigration rules. He didn’t work, and he regularly attended his monthly DHS meetings in Cleveland.  In February 2005, DHS officers informed him that he could stop reporting monthly to immigration and instead check in every three months. But when the boy showed up for his next DHS meeting, he was handcuffed and sent to be processed for summary deportation—a victim of left hand-right hand miscommunication within the federal bureaucracy.

DHS promptly flew the boy from Ohio to Chicago. In a vain attempt to avoid deportation, he knocked himself unconscious after repeatedly banging his head against a wall.  As a result, he was moved to a Houston detention center in spring 2005.  That’s where Fulbright attorneys John F. Sullivan and Hannah Sibiski stepped in.

The Legal Battle

John and Hannah immediately began an intensive investigation to determine the nature of the threats to the boy and identify any grounds for legal relief. If he is returned to China, he faces almost certain torture and death for defying the smugglers. Thus far, DHS, in part, has argued that the boy failed to present convincing proof that he would be tortured by the Chinese government even though his father has received visits from the Chinese police seeking a $60,000 payment for the snakeheads. 

  
Fulbright immediately filed a motion with the Board of Immigration Appeals, asking to reopen Young’s case in order to bring his new Convention Against Torture claim before an immigration court.

Correspondingly, the Fulbright attorneys sought an emergency stay of deportation.  The Third Circuit Court of Appeals granted the motion and stayed his deportation pending the Board’s review of the motion to reopen his case.

The Board, however, denied the motion to reopen the case.  John and Hannah immediately filed a petition for review of the Board’s denial with the Third Circuit.  They also filed emergency motions with the Third Circuit, requesting that the court stay deportation during the appeal of the Board’s denial to the Third Circuit.

One Child’s Chance

The Third Circuit granted the stay, securing the boy from deportation until the court decides his appeal. Currently, the case is pending before the Third Circuit.  John and Hannah also filed a collateral appeal of the DHS’s denial of consent to proceed to the Texas family court for special immigrant juvenile status (SIJS), a form of federal relief for abused children.  In late February, the federal court in the Southern District of Texas granted the request. (Click for full Houston Chronicle article). To see the federal court decision click here.

Since taking on this case, John Sullivan has championed children’s immigration rights, rallying almost two dozen other attorneys at Fulbright in various offices to take on several more cases, conduct “Know Your Rights” presentations and in-take interviews.

Most recently, Young was granted permanent residency in the United States and will be receiving his Green Card very soon.  Young maintains his hopes and dreams of becoming a biologist. (Click here for full press release from Fulbright & Jaworski ).