Evelyn Cruz

Evelyn Cruz, clinical professor of law and director of the Immigration Law & Policy Clinic, appeared on the July 7 broadcast of Horizon on Eight, Arizona’s PBS station, to discuss the federal lawsuit over Arizona’s new immigration law.

Cruz told host Ted Simons that the law “is dangerous for the cohesiveness of the country.”

In response to Simons’ question about the claim by supporters of SB 1070 that Arizona is only doing what the federal government has failed to do, Cruz said that a state cannot enact a law for a political agenda, that it must show some legal right to do so.

A state cannot act in a way that interferes with efforts of the federal government, she said.

See the broadcast here.

Cruz teaches Immigration Law and Comprehensive Law Practice, and she directs the clinic, which represents unaccompanied minors in immigration removal proceedings and received the 2007 President’s Medal for Social Embeddedness at ASU. She writes articles about immigration law, clinical education and therapeutic jurisprudence, and has co-authored several immigration law manuals used by immigration practitioners and pro-se detainees at Immigration Detention Centers throughout the country. Her latest paper, “Competent Voices: Noncitizen Defendants and the Right to Know the Immigration Consequences of Plea Agreements” discusses the Sixth Amendment’s right to effective assistance of counsel in relation to the criminal prosecution of undocumented workers arrested at the 2009 Postville, Iowa, immigration raids and the pending Supreme Court case Padilla v. Kentucky.