Steven Schulman Quoted on Detained Immigrant Families by Fusion
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Akin Gump pro bono partner Steven Schulman was quoted by Fusion in its article “Release from detention centers isn’t the end of undocumented women and children’s struggles” regarding Central American families seeking asylum and being held in U.S. detention centers.
Schulman noted that the three operating family detention centers (two in Texas, one in Pennsylvania) may hold up to as many as 3,500 detainees combined and that the only potential “silver lining” to these centers is the fact that lawyers can easily locate the families in need of representation.
Last year, in response to the “surge” at the Texas border of women and children asylum seekers and their subsequent detention, Akin Gump formed the Karnes City Immigrant Family Pro Bono Project with representatives from the University of Texas Law School Immigration Clinic, the Tahirih Justice Center in Houston, the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Austin and Human Rights First in Houston.
The firm’s pro bono efforts on behalf of the detainees at Karnes City, Texas, detention center have been covered by both general and legal media. (Learn more here and here.) Additionally, Akin Gump was recently recognized by the State Bar of Texas, which honored the firm with its W. Frank Newton Award and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, which honored the firm as being among its 2015 Beacon of Justice Award winners.
