Last year, I had the wonderful experience of overseeing a collaborative undergraduate student research project that created a collection of historical background briefs to help volunteer attorneys (and others!) better understand the current situation in Central America that is causing so many people to flee and to seek asylum in the US.
It is available in its current form here: https://blog.uvm.edu/sosten-centralamerica/
This semester, I am supervising a new phase of this project. An advanced undergraduate student will be revising and updating the site as a capstone research project with me. By the end of this coming spring semester, the site will include new briefs that will cover both Mexico and Brazil, since so many people currently in ICE detention are from those two countries, which were not included in the original site in 2018. Stay tuned for updates!
Second, I am working with a graduate student this semester to start a new phase of collaborative academic support for the Dilley Pro Bono Project. In consultation with the staff attorneys of the DPBP, we will be building a database of country conditions experts specifically for quick consultations (with rapid turnaround) on credible fear and reasonable fear cases. These are very different from asylum cases that have already gone forward, in that attorneys will sometimes only have a few hours with each client, as opposed to months or years. Consults are likely to be questions over phone or email such as “which cartel controls this region of this state in Mexico right now?” If you are interested in participating as an expert, please contact me! My research assistant and I will also be reaching out to scholars of Central America, Mexico, Brazil and likely more countries as we go and depending on the needs of the DPBP staff.