refugee law

Georgia Law Professor Jason Cade’s Yale Law Journal Forum article featured in MinnPost

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Jason A. Cade and his Yale Law Journal Forum article regarding the Board of Immigration Appeals were featured by MinnPost. The article titled “Asylum approvals plummet at Fort Snelling immigration court as case numbers soar” was written by Shadi Bushra and published 5/26/26.

The abstract of Cade’s March 2026 article entitled “Welcome to the Trump Administration’s Board of Immigration Appeals. The Immigrant Always Loses” can be found below:

The first 100 opinions in Volume 29 of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ precedential decisions—issued at more than three times the historical pace—constitute a project. The Trump administration has used the Attorney General’s self-referral power and a reconstituted, ideologically aligned Board to engineer a body of precedents that reliably produces one result: removal. This Essay organizes these decisions, catalogued in a full Appendix, into five main categories: (1) narrowing relief for noncitizens alleging persecution; (2) expanding mandatory detention while narrowing discretionary release; (3) maximizing the immigration consequences of criminal history and related grounds while foreclosing the relief mechanisms Congress created to mitigate them; (4) tightening the exceptional and extremely unusual hardship standard governing non-LPR cancellation of removal, including by converting the Board’s own institutional delay into a legal basis for denying relief already granted; and (5) tightening the procedural rules governing immigration court proceedings, including the mechanisms through which noncitizens can preserve congressionally-created pathways to status. A parallel set of rule changes, partially vacated by a federal court but now being reissued through notice-and-comment rulemaking, seeks to insulate most deportation orders from meaningful appellate review. The Essay identifies three implications for federal courts. First, Loper Bright’s elimination of Chevron deference, combined with the Board’s institutional redesign and the uniformity of its outcomes, undermines any claim to persuasive weight, and many decisions should not survive de novo review, provided courts do not find reasons to dilute scrutiny of agency action in the immigration context. Second, the exhaustion doctrine’s justifications collapse when the administrative body to be exhausted has been rebuilt to foreordain a result. Third, the Board’s selective deployment of the civil/criminal distinction, invoked to deny protections when it benefits the government and to exclude favorable criminal-law developments when it benefits the noncitizen, is a doctrinal choice that post-Loper Bright courts should examine without deference.

Cade is J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law and served as associate dean for clinical programs and experiential learning from 2020 to 2025. Cade teaches immigration law courses and directs the school’s Community Health Law Partnership (Community HeLP), an intensive clinic in which law students undertake an interdisciplinary approach to immigrants’ rights through individual client representation, litigation, and project-based advocacy before administrative agencies and federal courts. His research examines how nonfederal actors and institutions shape the modern immigration system, the intersections of immigration enforcement and criminal law, questions of legitimacy and proportionality within immigration adjudication, and the legal frameworks governing immigration policy protest.

Georgia Law’s Community HeLP Clinic wins asylum case for long-time client

The University of Georgia School of Law’s Community Health Law Partnership Clinic recently secured asylum for a long-time client.

Under the supervision of Director & Hosch Professor Jason A. Cade and Staff Attorney Kristen Shepherd, Elizabeth M. “Beth” Boland (J.D. ’26) and third-year student Lauren R. Harter (J.D. ’25) represented the client at her most recent hearing in Arlington, Virginia, marking the end of nine years of advocacy. Clinic Paralegal Sarah Ehlers served as interpreter.   

Other students who worked on the case, which included litigation before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, Board of Immigration Appeals, and the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, were Carolina Mares (J.D. ’25), Hope Skypek (J.D. ’24), Anna T. Ratterman (J.D. ’24), Ariane C. “Ari” Williams (J.D. ’22), Thomas A. Evans (J.D. ’22) and Frederick King (J.D. ’21). 

Georgia Law hosts roundtable discussion for 2024 Mandela Fellows

This month, a group of participants from the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders visited the University of Georgia School of Law for a roundtable discussion as part of their 6-week program at the university. The Fellows met with Christine M. Scartz, Clinical Associate Professor & Jane W. Wilson Family Justice Clinic Director; Joan Prittie (J.D. ’93), Executive Director of Project Safe; and two LL.M. alumnae, including Lydia Lartey (LL.M., ’24), a Court Appointed Special Advocate and former Mandela Fellow.

The 10 Fellows in attendance have work experience in anti-human trafficking, advocacy for women and girls, human rights, and refugee and victim assistance, among other topics. A total of 10 countries were represented in this group: The Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Burkina Faso, Uganda, and the Ivory Coast.

Scartz, Prittie, and Lartey began the roundtable by discussing their respective backgrounds and work, and then answered the Fellows’ questions. This is the second year that the law school has hosted a group of Fellows.

The Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders is the flagship program of the U.S. government’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) and sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. Since 2014, nearly 4,200 young leaders from every country in Sub-Saharan Africa have participated in the Fellowship. Mandela Washington Fellows, between the ages of 25 and 35, are accomplished innovators and leaders in their communities and countries. 

In 2019, UGA became a Fellowship Institute Partner and hosted its first cohort of Fellows on the UGA campus. The Mandela Washington Fellowship is delivered through a collaborative effort between the Office of Global Engagement, the J.W. Fanning Institute for Leadership Development, and the African Studies Institute at Franklin College.