For Immediate Release
May 3, 2006

Contact:
Elissa Free, (202) 662-9500

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, a group of eleven Georgetown University Law Center students released a comprehensive report, "Unintended Consequences: Refugee Victims of the War on Terror." PDF  | Flash   The students spent the past semester investigating a controversial immigration law that has affected thousands of refugees seeking protection by the United States.  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 definitions of terrorist activity and "material support" are quite broad and include no exceptions for persons forced into assisting terrorist groups.  As a result, thousands of refugees seeking protection from the U.S. have had their cases denied or put on indefinite hold by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) because of "material support," such as goods or services that terrorist groups extorted from them, often under the threat of death.

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." One young man who had been kidnapped by paramilitaries and forced to dig graves would be barred from refugee resettlement in the U.S. for having provided services.  Similarly, a small business owner who was forced to provide scarves and hats to paramilitaries-and subjected to sexual abuse when she sought payment, and a farmwoman who gave a single glass of water to a guerilla and, as a result, was persecuted by paramilitaries, would be also be denied admission for having provided goods.

The students' report recommends that Congress take urgent action to amend the law to provide an exception to material support provided under duress.

"The material support bar is having the unintended consequence of excluding those refugees the United States has long stood to protect - the victims of terrorism," said Jennie Pasquarella, a third-year student and one of the authors of the report. 

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.

About Georgetown University Law Center

Georgetown University Law Center is one of the world's premier law schools. It has the largest full-time faculty in the nation and is pre-eminent in several areas, including constitutional, international, tax and clinical law. Drawing on its Jesuit heritage, it has a strong tradition of public service and is dedicated to the principle that law is but a means, justice is the end. With this principle in mind, Georgetown Law has built an environment that cultivates an exchange of ideas and the pursuit of academic excellence. It brings together an extraordinarily varied group of teachers, scholars and practitioners, as well as an outstanding student body.

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