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DC professor urges broadened attack on abuse of immigrants
By Bruce Walton
Youngstown
Every year, countless immigrants – many unreported – become victims of sexual assault, human trafficking as well as physical and sexual abuse. That’s what 260 people who attended an event Thursday hoped to help prevent.
Community Legal Aid, a nonprofit law firm serving the legal needs of low-income individuals in central Northeast Ohio, hosted the “Helping Sexual Assault and Human Trafficking Victims: Holding their Abusers Accountable” event in Kilcawley Center at Youngstown State University.
Keynote speaker Leslye Orloff since the 1990s has spent her legal career advocating for the protection of immigrants and prevention of attacks on immigrants by abusive bosses, spouses and criminals who often use immigration and deportation laws against them.
After seeing her speak at a national training session, some staff at Community Legal Aid wanted her to visit Youngstown to help educate the community how to use the law to protect immigrants.
“We do enough cases for immigrants that it would certainly change the way we practice for the immigrants we have, and we’re hoping to expand our reach into the immigrant-victim community so we can have a greater impact,” said Steven McGarrity, Community Legal Aid associate director.
Orloff has directly advocated immigration- law reform and been involved in the writing of new immigration protection laws until 2011, and currently works as a professor at the College of Law of American University.
“We in Washington can write all the laws we want,” she said. “But in the end, it doesn’t really help anyone without the people on the ground in the communities that are actually seeing immigrant crime victims day by day, for them to know what the laws are and how to use them to help victims.”
Orloff lectured on how members of the community can identify the many laws and benefits for immigrants and use them to protect victims from abusers. No matter if they are a judge, a law enforcement official, an attorney or even just a concerned citizen, Orloff said knowing the laws and planning can prevent more abuse and trafficking.
Orloff said that knowing the kind of abusers to look for and how they use the system against their victims, as well as knowing about laws to help them can protect immigrants and stop criminals.
McGarrity said he believes the event will change the way Community Legal Aid practices law for immigrants.