Georgetown Law Students Release Report “Unintended Consequences: Refugee Victims of the War on Terror”

Eleven Georgetown law students have released a comprehensive report, “Unintended Consequences: Refugee Victims of the War on Terror.”  The students’ research, which included a fact-finding trip to Ecuador to interview Colombian refugees, has contributed to the on-going public debate on whether the law should be changed. The students’ focus is on a change to the immigration law made by the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 and the REAL ID Act of 2005 that prevents refugees who are coerced into assisting terrorist groups from seeking entry into the U.S. because they provided “material support” to terrorists. The Georgetown Law students found that 71 percent of the 63 refugees they interviewed-persons who fled to Ecuador from Colombia would be denied admission to the U.S. under the “material support bar.” The students’ report recommends that Congress take urgent action to amend the law to provide an exception to material support provided under duress. Accompanied by Georgetown Law Visiting Professor Andy Schoenholtz and human rights attorney Mia Cohen and working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the students initiated this project under the auspices of Georgetown Law’s new Human Rights Institute. The students have met with a bipartisan group of Capitol Hill staffers to discuss their findings and will present their report to António Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, when he visits the Law Center this week. A recent New York Times editorial, “Terrorists or Victims?” relied, in part, on the students’ research, and Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have proposed an amendment to the material support bar that would add an exception for involuntary support.

Click here to read the report.

KJ