Meet The Woman Leading An Army of Lawyers

This lawyer is working overtime to make sure the resistance to the travel ban is anything but chaotic.

Becca Heller

Becca Heller

To say the landscape of politics has changed radically since the election of Donald Trump is a bit of an understatement. His ruling credo — to the extent one can identify a consistent philosophy — seems to be to undo and undermine everything that was done under the Obama administration, with big corporations usually coming out as the victors.

One area where we’ve seen a massive shift is immigration, as President Trump has tried repeatedly to execute, through executive order, a travel ban which would stop all visits and immigration to the United States by people hailing from countries on a designated list. Thus far, the court system — one of those pesky checks and balances Trump has his panties in a bunch over — has stopped such an order from becoming the law of the land. But the courts do not magically hear cases anytime they suspect injustice is afoot. No, of course not, courts are limited to cases and controversies in front of them and there was a network of lawyers who heeded an immediate call to action when the travel bans were signed into law.

The New York Times has an illuminating profile on Becca Heller, founder of the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), who has been helping to lead the fight against any draconian change to U.S. immigration law. While the administration’s push for the travel ban has at times seem chaotic, Heller and IRAP (which she founded while at Yale Law) have been working overtime to make sure the resistance to the travel bans are anything but:

“If it hadn’t been for this operation, there would have been chaos and mayhem,” said Robert Atkins, a partner at the law firm Paul Weiss who volunteered at Kennedy International Airport, “but we, the public, would not have begun as quickly to understand the inhumanity of what was going on.”

The media attention the work against the travel ban has gotten has paid off — IRAP has tripled its budget, to $6.5 million, and a short film about the organization’s work is in progress. As Heller said:

“It’s a really good time to be leading an army of lawyers on behalf of refugee rights,” she said. “Expect a lot more lawsuits.”

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The election of Trump, and what that means for IRAP’s clients, has been motivating for Heller. That’s when she began to conceptualize her Rolodex of people working for refugee rights as an army:

After Mr. Trump’s election, she said, “I started thinking increasingly in military terms, so I was like: ‘What does it mean that we have an army of 2,000 lawyers who want to do stuff for refugees? What can we do with that?’”

That kind of talk, and her accomplishments, have turned Ms. Heller and her organization, the International Refugee Assistance Project, or IRAP, into heroes of Mr. Trump’s opponents and causes célèbres of the coastal salon circuit.

Heller’s work continues, as the court battle over the legality of the most recent travel ban goes on.

A Travel Ban’s Foe: A Young Firebrand and Her Pro Bono Brigade [New York Times]


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headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).