Send Them Back tells part of the story of a remarkable attempt, which spanned four decades, to bring the rule of law to refugees from the troubled nation of Haiti. It discusses several of the cases that civil rights lawyers, working directly with Haitians and other activists, filed and litigated for Haitian refugees, and the legal, social, and political aspects of such litigation. The litigation fostered structural legal changes, policies meant to cure the inequities in the treatment of refugees, and a determined political opposition to unfair and illegal immigration decisions.

Lunch is provided (available at noon). RSVP required (via Google form).

Irwin P. Stotsky

Irwin P. Stotsky is professor of law at the University of Miami School of Law. He received his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1974. For the past thirty-one years, he has represented Haitian and other refugees on constitutional and human rights issues in many cases, including several cases in the United States Supreme Court.

For his representation of refugees in a series of cases before the United States Supreme Court and his human rights work abroad, he received human rights awards from the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the Haitian Refugee Center. For his work in investigating human rights abuses worldwide and his scholarship, he received the Inter-American Law Review’s 1997 Lawyer of the Americas award. He has recently been nominated for the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) Human Rights Award for career achievements. He is the founder and Director of the University of Miami Center for the Study of Human Rights and Acting Director of the James Weldon Johnson/Robert H. Waters Summer Institute. He is a founding member of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, a human rights institute that researches and distributes objective and accurate information on the human rights conditions in Haiti.