One by one, the students clambered out of a university-issued van and into the brisk March air. They grabbed their backpacks, laptops, file folders and printouts, and filed into their office for the day.
As members of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s immigration law clinic, they’d made the three-hour trek from the capital city to North Platte to offer free legal counsel to families at HOPE-Esperanza, a local nonprofit organization dedicated to serving North Platte’s immigrant community. With the majority of Nebraska’s immigration attorneys based in Omaha and Lincoln, the North Platte trip offered a rare opportunity for one-on-one consultations close to home.
“We’re kind of like motorcycle mechanics,” said Kevin Ruser, UNL law professor and director of the clinic. “We’re trying to figure out what’s wrong, and if we can fix it.”
For the next five hours, the students welcomed people looking for answers.
The work was exhausting. Several students served dual roles as lawyers and interpreters, switching between Spanish and English and back again at a rapid clip. By the end of the night, the clinic’s team had given legal advice to 24 families. The group exchanged tired smiles, pleased with the number of people they’d helped. But the success was bittersweet.
Several weeks before the North Platte event, Ruser announced he’d be stepping away to focus on classroom teaching. The immigration clinic would close with his departure.
The news, first reported by Nebraska Public Media, sent shockwaves through the state’s immigration ecosystem. Questions about the timing came quickly: Was political pressure responsible for the closure?
The truth is more straightforward.
“I’m getting old,” Ruser said.
The law professor started teaching at UNL in 1985, and created the immigration clinic in 1998. He’s watched the program expand from two students each year to eight, and shift from primarily deportation defense work to more affirmative actions, like securing visas for victims of violent crime or undocumented kids who’ve been neglected by a parent.
It has allowed students to learn the ropes in real time — nurturing both the foundational skills necessary to practice law, and the more specialized expertise of immigration law. And it’s served as a homegrown pipeline of immigration attorneys for Nebraska, which struggles to attract out-of-state talent.
But after 40 years of going full-throttle, Ruser is ready to step back. He’ll be teaching an immigration law course next year. Richard Moberly, dean of the law school, said the university is working to develop external learning opportunities for students in the meantime.
In a different financial landscape, Ruser’s decision wouldn’t necessarily spell the end of the clinic. But UNL has weathered a series of difficult budget cuts and faculty reductions over the last year, intended to address a structural deficit.
The law school had two tenured professors accept buyouts as part of that process, and because they taught a required first-year course, the school needs to prioritize hiring their replacements. Hiring an additional professor to oversee the clinic isn’t in the cards, at least for the time being.
“It’s hard because they’re still paying me,” Ruser said. “I’m still slopping at the public trough here, right? They haven’t gained a line by me changing my teaching focus … I feel awful about it, but not awful enough not to go through with the deal.”
***
Kristin Mohrman still remembers the sting of rejection she felt when her application to join the immigration clinic was denied.
Mohrman, an Omaha-based immigration attorney, attended UNL’s law school from 2002 to 2005. She’d come from the University of Kansas, where her dreams of becoming a human rights lawyer flummoxed advisers.
“That’s why I was drawn to immigration law … I felt like, gosh, I don’t know how one becomes a human rights lawyer,” she said. “And it seems like something that is reserved for someone who is not me, this little Midwestern girl, so I guess I’ll have to find the next best thing.”
Her first internship with the Douglas County Public Defender’s Office, she said, opened her eyes to the fact that there were many human rights issues within her own community, including immigration issues. Mohrman, who speaks Spanish and Portuguese, said she was eager to use her language skills to help others.
But back then, the immigration clinic only accepted two students a year. Mohrman didn’t make the cut.
Mohrman instead ended up in the civil clinic, also taught by Ruser, and still ended up working in immigration law. It’s become a longstanding joke between the two.
More than a decade after she was turned away, Mohrman suggested Jessica Valdez give the clinic a try. Valdez, then a paralegal, had been inspired to pursue a career in immigration law after an experience as an undergraduate at Creighton University.
On a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border, Valdez and her classmates went to the fields to pick crops alongside migrant laborers. It was an eye-opening experience for the daughter of Mexican immigrants.
“My dad worked in the fields, and that’s how he was able to get his residency through the farm workers’ program,” she said. “But I didn’t really understand and appreciate it at the time, because I was so young. He made it sound very amazing … But when we were there, I was like, ‘this is horrible.’”
Valdez took a five-year pause between undergrad and law school, working as a paralegal. By the time she enrolled at UNL, the immigration clinic had tripled the number of students it accepted each year. She was accepted into the clinic last fall, and became one of its final participants.
“Even though I felt like I knew so much, the more I learn, the more I feel like I don’t know — there’s so much more that you can learn,” she said.
Working alongside Ruser and her classmates has left Valdez confident she’ll be ready to serve clients post-graduation. But she’s concerned about what foreclosing this opportunity could mean for the state in the future, noting that just last year the state turned its prison in McCook into an immigration detention facility.
“If we don’t have a program that will foster that kind of passion, what does that mean for the immigration attorneys in Nebraska? Are they going to dwindle down? That is a big worry for me, what that’s going to be like for the immigrant population in Nebraska,” she said.
In the last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests in Nebraska have skyrocketed. Mohrman has had to turn clients away because of capacity issues, and she knows other immigration attorneys face similar problems. While the number of immigration attorneys in Nebraska has grown, Mohrman noted it hasn’t kept up with demand — and the clinic’s closure may exacerbate the issue.
“And then, of course, the larger ripple effect is the impact into the community,” she said. “Because the clinic serves people who can’t afford attorneys, and there’s always a great need for that. It’s just kind of this domino effect right there.”
Even before the closure announcement, the current climate around immigration enforcement complicated the clinic’s work. For six years, the clinic’s students, alongside other law school volunteers, ran a naturalization event helping eligible immigrants apply for citizenship. But when the clinic announced the 2026 date, it received only one application.
If people are eligible for naturalization, Ruser said, they shouldn’t be scared of ICE. But fear of attending a publicly advertised immigration event had already seeped into the community. Ultimately, the event was canceled due to a lack of interest.
***
The immigration clinic is one of nine clinics offered by the college of law. Those clinics offer third-year students the opportunity to represent real clients, under the guidance of supervising faculty members. Moberly, the law school dean, said the clinical programs have grown significantly since 2017, jumping from four to the current nine. With the loss of the immigration clinic, the university will offer eight.
Moberly said that when Ruser came to him requesting a change, he looked at the law school’s overall offerings.
“When we looked back over several years, not all of our clinical seats had been taken,” Moberly said. “I felt like we had some room where we could still meet student demand, even if we didn’t offer the immigration clinic.”
The college is working to solidify external learning opportunities for students interested in immigration law, where they will work under the supervision of outside attorneys. Moberly said they’re in the process of developing five or six different opportunities with the Center for Immigrant and Refugee Advancement, which counts several clinic graduates among its staff.
More than anything, Ruser said, the clinic was an opportunity to let students get real world experience before they began practicing on their own.
“And so it’s unfortunate that this clinic is going away, but we’ve got a lot of clinics here where they’re learning stuff, and there are people that are practicing immigration law here today in this state that never took this clinic, and they’re really good practitioners,” Ruser said.
Moberly didn’t dismiss the possibility of reviving the immigration clinic at a later date, but noted that with further state investment unlikely, it would take private investment. The dean confirmed he’s been exploring the idea of fundraising for the clinic.
“Our First Amendment clinic is through private philanthropy,” Moberly said. “Our children’s justice clinic was created through private philanthropy. Our housing justice clinic, private philanthropy … So our community has supported clinical education, I think, because it’s a great educational experience for our students, but also because it impacts the community, and I would love it if people wanted to support an immigration clinic.”
For now, the clinic’s time is coming to a close. Ruser and his students have passed clients on to other practitioners and nonprofits in the state, including CIRA, the Center for Legal Immigration Assistance and the Nebraska Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence. They’ve hit the road, traveling to North Platte and Wakefield to offer as much help as they can before the semester ends.
“I’m going to miss the students. I’m going to miss the clients,” Ruser said. “But I think at the end of the day, the question is, are we going to have more immigration lawyers? And I think we will, because the bar is growing. It’s going to grow to meet the demand … But I hope the legacy of this clinic is that they’ve learned how to practice law and be better lawyers.”
17 Comments
I could nitpick this article line-by-line if I really wanted to or thought anyone reading actually cared, but lets just cut to the chase. As is typical in Flatwater articles, the majority of the “story” is just personal anecdotes told from a one-sided perspective by individuals who have already decided where they stand on the topic at hand. No effort was made to entertain the opposite perspective and the author even silently pretends as if no other perspective exists. Yet the reality remains that an overwhelming majority of law abiding citizens in this state probably don’t want their public servants using tax dollars to help illegal immigrants flout the law.
It isn’t a “human rights” issue to enforce immigration law. These laws exist for a reason, they have existed for a long time and every country on earth has them. The court system already ruled in favor of the governor and the corrections department using the detention facility for immigration purposes.
If anyone in this story really wanted to help people who are currently in violation of our nation’s immigration laws, they would encourage them to accept the $1,000 payment (which recently increased to $2,600) which they can receive for self deporting, also preventing them from being detained or prosecuted. It’s literally free money and a free plane ticket in exchange for just obeying the law. That would be some solid legal advice.
In addition to the courts ruling in favor of the detention center, several state senators have visited and toured the facility. Upon completing their tour, the senators confirmed that the conditions were humane, the facility was clean, the food was good and the detainees were given access to legal resources. These reports came from both Republican and Democrat senators.
The Nebraska Examiner took comments from those Senators and reported their statements about the facility conditions being humane. Flatwater on the other hand… yeeeeaaaah… not so much.
Lol I’m confused–do you think that law students at the immigration clinic or taking a course on immigration law are being taught to ignore the law or something? They are learning the ins and outs of our current immigration laws. If the ways the laws are currently written allow some immigrants to stay in this country or have rights (or whatever it is you consider to be “flouting” the law lol) then they can legally do that…do you understand how laws work? Find me a single immigration attorney who would advise a client, “Even though the law is X, I advise you to break it and do Y” like please be serious lmao
Asking someone to “show me your JD” or suggesting that law school students are automatically right because they are in law school is called an Appeal to Authority Logical Fallacy. I’ll let you look that one up yourself, as you seem to be such a well educated person.
The laws in our country do not say that illegal immigrants get to stay. Why even have a law that regulates immigration if that law can simply be negated by going “aw gee wiz guiz, immigrants have rights!!” That does not make sense.
What these lawyers do is what lawyers often do: Even when their client is obviously guilty and has no real chance to win their case, they still attempt to use their legal acumen to manipulate the system to either delay the inevitable, or hem up the court system with so many maneuvers that it eventually becomes cheaper for the government to accept some kind of plea bargain or other arrangement. That sort of thing happens every day in criminal cases involving lawful citizens, so you would be fooling yourself to say that it doesn’t also happen in immigration cases.
Again, if these attorneys were truly serious about helping their clients and not simply pushing a political viewpoint, then they would advise anyone who is here illegally to just take the $2,600 and the free plane ticket. Then they can apply to return legally using the appropriate process, which a lawyer could also help them with.
It is highly inappropriate for the state (or feds) to be funding an effort to undermine federal policy. That’s for the private sector to address–there are plenty of lawyers out there.
“It has allowed students to learn the ropes in real time — nurturing both the foundational skills necessary to practice law, and the more specialized expertise of immigration law”
While well-intentioned, this is case study how good intentions becomes a taxpayer funded effort to subsidize a private enterprise. Imagine the UNL College of Law funding a “corporate law clinic” that “allowed students to learn the ropes in real time — nurturing both the foundational skills necessary to practice law, and the more specialized expertise” of hostile takeovers! Or a UNL clinic funded by tax dollars that allowed students to learn the ropes of landlord-tenant law that focused on protecting landlords from deadbeat tenants.
I would suggest a FFP piece on why lawyers refuse to provide these services pro bono.
J. Gross freakout over discovering that law schools teach students legal skills lmao you seriously can’t make this up. Never change, my guy <3
I could nitpick this comment line by line if I had the time… ‘illegal immigrants flouting the law’ is quite the assumption, dearie!
Actually, I don’t think it is Chris. Every nation on earth has immigration laws, and most of them actually enforce them. Have you ever taken the time to look up what the punishment is if you illegally immigrate to the Vatican? It turns out the pope isn’t as “charitable” as many people think! And those Swiss mercenaries actually have some pretty disturbing firepower in their armory, no matter how silly those outfits make them look.
It seems that only in our country are we expected to turn a blind eye to the problem of illegal immigration. One person will say we need the labor, but that seems pretty racist to me, that you only want immigrants to pick your crops and clean your hotels for you. Another person, like you perhaps, might say that these people “aren’t illegal” and that it’s a “human rights” issue. But that appeal to emotion fallacy doesn’t in any way change the fact that if a person runs across the border in the dark of night and expects someone to give them an under table job the next day, they have committed not just one but MULTIPLE crimes.
The “otherwise law abiding” illegal immigrant is largely a myth, since in order to even operate off the books in an illegal immigration state a person inevitably must commit multiple other crimes, such as stealing social security numbers, falsified documents, unauthorized employment, etc. These are not victimless crimes either, particularly in the case of social security number theft. Are you aware that among illegal immigrants the social security numbers of children are particularly prized? This is because children rarely use their social security number and often won’t discover the theft until they reach adulthood, at which point they face years of effort to reverse all the damage done to their reputation based on the fraudulent use of their number by an illegal immigrant.
Not to mention this: Sheridan Gorman, Jocelyn Nungaray, Rachel Morin, Laken Riley, Kayla Hamilton, Sarah Root, Kate Steinle, Maria Gonzalez, etc, etc, etc…
“Not to mention this: Sheridan Gorman, Jocelyn Nungaray, Rachel Morin, Laken Riley, Kayla Hamilton, Sarah Root, Kate Steinle, Maria Gonzalez, etc, etc, etc…”
I for one WILL mention and HONOR those poor souls. May God give them comfort in His home, and may a just God condemn their murderers to eternal suffering in hell as their earthly bodies slowly rot in the flames of their own hate.
It’s so sad how many commenters here and elsewhere simply dismiss the absolutely horror created by illegal immigration as an “assumption.”
SHAME ON THEM. SHAME SHAME SHAME.
Far more crimes per capita are committed by American citizens, but’s let’s demonize all immigrants because of a few bad ones. It’s clear right-wing media has successfully triggered your amygdala as your fears are completely irrational. Likely call yourself a Christian too!
Sheridan Gorman, Jocelyn Nungaray, Rachel Morin, Laken Riley, Kayla Hamilton, Sarah Root, Kate Steinle, Maria Gonzalez,
SAY THEIR NAMES!
SAY THEIR NAMES!
SAY THEIR NAMES!
“Far more crimes per capita are committed by American citizens, but’s let’s demonize all immigrants because of a few bad ones”
Far more crimes committed by American citizens? As a raw statistic, yes. As a crime RATE, absolutely not.
But see, citizen crime is simply a condition that is expected, and punished.
The immigrant crime rate (or by raw numbers), should be 0. Do you understand why?
See, one set of criminal perpetrators are expected (citizens); the other is by choice. I choose to do EVERYTHING to ensure that the immigrant crime rate is 0 as it should be.
In the names of Sheridan Gorman, Jocelyn Nungaray, Rachel Morin, Laken Riley, Kayla Hamilton, Sarah Root, Kate Steinle, & Maria Gonzalez, why don’t you?
” ‘illegal immigrants flouting the law’ is quite the assumption, dearie!”
100% of the immigrants who entered our country ILLEGALLY conclusively “flouted the law” by definition, right?
That’s just basic logic.
What about people who are here illegally, but who are providing needed services, who have not committed crimes, people who have lived and worked in the US for years or decades….why not offer them a path to citizenship so they can continue to work, pay taxes and support their family? What about a student who was brought here illegally as a young child, now an honors college student pulled from a line at an airport while going home for Christmas, but instead deported after living in the US for most of their life? This honors student and others like them have nothing to offer the United States? They are not worthy of a pathway to citizenship? Why is there NO path to citizenship for people whose only crime is being in the US illegally? What is so horrible about working with them to help them become legal citizens if they have no criminal record? What about legal immigrants who are trying to bring their families to their states ? Lawyers are expensive and many hardworking people can’t afford the legal fees. Nebraska prides itself on being a wholesome place to live and work, but there is a large segment of Nebraska’s population that needs to read and study the biblical story of the good samaritan….many of you don’t get it.
“What about people who are here illegally, but who are providing needed services”
So you are willing to turn a blind eye to illegal immigration, as long as there is an ample supply of brown people to clean your toilets, pick your crops and drive your trucks for you? Sounds racist to me.
“who have not committed crimes”
The “otherwise law abiding illegal immigrant” is a myth. In order to even operate off the books in an illegal immigration state a person inevitably must commit multiple other crimes, such as stealing social security numbers, falsified documents, unauthorized employment, etc.
“people who have lived and worked in the US for years or decades”
That is extremely disappointing, but it was because of lax enforcement by Democrats and activists who wanted “amnesty” that so many illegal immigrants were allowed to remain here for so long without being deported. All the current administration is doing is enforcing the laws which were on the books all of those years, and in so doing they are deporting these individuals as they should have been from day 1.
“why not offer them a path to citizenship so they can continue to work, pay taxes and support their family”
You mean amnesty. Simply put, thats not the law and not what anyone intended to happen when those laws were put in place. Every nation on earth has immigration laws and most of them enforce them much more aggressively than America does. Our nation already accepts more legal immigrants than any other nation on earth, but we can’t simply be a dumping ground for every person who isn’t wanted elsewhere. People who came here illegally should be deported and get back in line to try to immigrate here legally, just like all the other legal immigrants did.
“What about a student who was brought here illegally as a young child”
It’s sad that their parents did that to them. But what you are creating here is a catch 22 situation. If I deport the parent, you will say I’m a bad person for taking away the parent from their child. If I deport the child, you will say I’m a bad person for deporting someone who had no choice in their situation. Illegal immigrants know these talking points and it’s the entire reason many of them bring their children, knowing it will make it harder to deport them. We need to be firm and consistent in our enforcement so that this sort of thing isn’t exploited.
“people whose only crime is being in the US illegally”
Again, that is not their “only” crime, because as I have repeatedly said, being present in the U.S. illegally requires the commission of multiple crimes in virtually every case. It’s also irrelevant and illogical as an argument. Why do we send people to prison when their “only” crime is robbing a bank or committing murder? A crime is a crime. You do the crime, you do the time.
In the case of illegal immigration, the “time” is not a prison sentence, but deportation. This is particularly so because the crime of illegal immigration continues every day that the person is illegally present in our country, and the crime itself only ends when their presence is removed. That is what deportation does, it literally stops the crime which is taking place. So this isn’t even really the equivalent of a bank robber going to prison, but more akin to the police removing the robber from the bank. What you are arguing for is equivalent to saying that the bank robber is such a nice guy, we aught to just let him live in the bank from now on. It doesn’t make any sense. Of course we have to deport them, because that ends the crime.
“needs to read and study the biblical story of the good samaritan”
Actually, I believe that you are the one who did not understand the point of that story. The reason the central figure of the story is known as the “good” Samaritan (and not just any random Samaritan) is because the idea of an allegedly “good” Samaritan would have been shocking to the audience which received that story. The Samaritans were renowned as bloodthirsty and cruel thieves in their time. The idea that one would help an injured traveler on the road was unthinkable. As such, using a Samaritan as the “good” person in the story, while priests and other prominent members of the community ignored the injured man, was supposed to convey the fact that the people hearing the story weren’t as holy and upright as they thought they were (a fact Jesus and his apostles had to repeatedly drive home when confronting the ruling powers of their time). Your attempt at exegesis of this scripture and use of it as a blunt instrument in an immigration debate is totally divorced from the historical-cultural context of the story.
I will gladly debate you, the pope or anybody else to prove that biblical scripture doesn’t provide a wholesale license to break immigration laws. Jesus was confronted multiple times during his ministry by people who either wanted an excuse to defy the laws of their time or by pharisees attempting to trick Jesus into saying something they could use to prosecute him legally. In each case Jesus turned the argument back on the person and reminded them to give to Cesar what is Cesar’s and to God what is God’s (Mark 12:17). The bible does not say it is okay to break the law, nor does a broad appeal to “charity” allow individual citizens to overturn the government’s lawful authority to regulate immigration. Any such argument is an intellectually shallow take that willfully ignores the majority of contextual factors in this situation.
*Caesar
Too long to read, but you read it so thoroughly that you found a spelling error?
Can I get Ad Hominem logical fallacy?