Two students in the Appellate Litigation Clinic helped win the release from immigration detention of a woman from the Dominican Republic.

2Ls Kalani Linnell and Mischa Wheat, supervised by Professor Richard Frankel, represent the woman, who had been held without bail for two years.

The woman has a green card but faces deportation after being convicted of a crime in 1996.  If deported, Frankel said, the woman is at risk of abuse and torture.

Though the woman served time for the crime, she was detained while her immigration case wound its way through the system, a process that has taken more than two years.

Frankel said the length of the woman’s detention violated her constitutional rights, so Linnell and Wheat filed for a habeas corpus decision in U.S. District Court.  The court agreed, and set a bond hearing, clearing the way for their client’s release.

A hearing on their client’s deportation will be held in May.