legal reserach and publications on cases or immigration issues by DW Sanders

Lifting the Ban on Admitting Openly Gay Immigrants in all Forms of Legal Entry, (law student publication) Columbia University Human Rights Law Journal | 1990
This student law review article details the history of the nation's anti-gay immigration policy. It argues for Congress dissolve the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that classifies gay immigrants as "sexual deviants" and makes them ineligible to enter the United States on the basis of their sexual orientation.

Gay Conversation Therapy Rejected as Persecution in Asylum Claims, American Bar Association Journal | 1999
This bar review article covers a case Dina worked on where her lesbian client was denied asylum after an immigration judge rules that gay conversation therapy was not a form persecution. This article argues for a legal clarification in the Immigration and Nationality Act on whether persecution requires the intent to harm or if it enough to qualify as persecution if the victim experienced the act as harm regardless of the intent. She draws parallels and possible arguments that could be used to deny asylum claims to women who suffered female genital mutilation to further her argument on the need for clarification on this issue.

Poorly Drafted Post 9/11 Anti-Immigration Law Allows for Sex and Labor Trafficking Victims to be Classified as Supporters of the Terrorist Organizations That Exploit Them, New York University Law Review | 2005 & 2014
This law review article focuses on a 2005 case Dina worked on after Congress passed a law in 2004 in response to the September 11 attacks that restricted asylum and immigration. The broad language of the law stated any person who provided “material support” to a terrorist organization would be ineligible for a grant of asylum. In Dina's case, a woman who was a forced to marry a leader of a terrorist organization, provide domestic service such as cooking a cleaning, and was repeatedly sexually assaulted in her forced marriage was considered to have provided the organization "material support," as argued by the Department of Justice. With no distinction for duress or forced servitude including forced prostitution and enslavement the immigration judge stated he was "powerless" to grant asylum until Congress made a clarification on whether forced support qualified as material support.

In a 2014 update to this article, Dina adds that still no such clarification has been made by Congress. She adds information from a case where a man in Guatemala was forced to empty his store’s register at gunpoint by gang members and was refused a grant of asylum for the same reason her client was ten years ago.

Fee and Flee Lawyers Repeatedly Scamming Undocumented Immigrant Communities with no Legal or Ethical Repercussions, Georgetown Immigration Law Journal | 2008
This article discusses the illegal practice of attorneys or fake attorneys who take on undocumented persons, claim to represent them at their deportation hearing and then never show up to court. The client without a deportation defense is then deported and unable to have their case retried because there is no ineffective assistance of counsel constitutional requirement in a deportation hearing. It also makes immigrant communities distrustful of the lawyers who want to help them. Dina also argues for the AGO to recognize a right to effective assistance of counsel in a deportation hearing which in her opinion is a due process requirement.

Juvenile Immigrants Representing Themselves in Asylum Claims, Harvard Law Review | 2013
This article exposes the unjustifiable practice of requiring children as young as three to argue their asylum case without an attorney in immigration court. Dina calls for the The Obama Administration to stop putting children in deportation proceedings if they do not have legal representation, and that the government has an obligation to provide an immigration attorney to a child facing deportation.

Southern US Regions Have Become Asylum Free Zones, American Bar Association Journal | 2015
This article is about the alarming increase in asylum denials in the Southern US where as many as 98% of asylum claims were denied in a given year in the Southern US regions of Texas, AZ, and SC. Dina argues that is a statistical impossibility for 98% of claims to be illegitimate and that racial bias is playing a large role in denying otherwise viable asylum claims.

The Unprecedented Asylum Consequences of the Trump Travel Ban, National Immigration Law Center Policy Briefs; reprinted in American Bar Association Journal | 2017
This is policy/outline guide for attorneys who have clients with pending asylum claims from countries on the travel ban list and how to proceed with the claim. Additionally, it argues for any updated executive order or judicial opinion that extends the travel ban to specifically exclude asylum claims from the ban to end the confusion surrounding the issue in immigration court.