Title 42: The Weaponization of Public Health Against Asylum Seekers
To learn about Title 42 and current US immigration policy and to spark discussion on how the medical-legal community can stay informed and advocate for asylum-seekers being targeted by pseudo-scientific immigration policy.
Learning Objectives:
Define Title 42 and understand its historical significance in the US
Understand the basis for using public health to justify restrictive asylum policy
Explain the consequences of Title 42 on migrants’ health
Describe perspectives and advocacy efforts within the medical and legal communities
Discuss avenues for advocacy, particularly for those new to the field
Learn More about Title 42 by visiting our Learning Library
Nicole Hallett, JD
Nicole Hallett is an Associate Clinical Professor of Law and is the Director of the U Chicago Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, which provides legal representation to immigrant communities in Chicago. After graduating from Yale Law School, she worked on the United States District Court of the District of Connecticut and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
She has served on faculty at law schools including NYU, the University of Buffalo, and Yale. She also has a master’s degree from the University of Oxford in Refugee Studies and has worked for civil rights groups such as the ACLU. Her scholarship focuses on immigration and labor/employment law, and in particular, how laws in these areas either promote or impede collective action and power-building in subordinated communities. In her practice, she specializes in creative lawyering through complex litigation and multi-pronged advocacy. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, NPR, The Nation, the Today Show, the Intercept, and the Associated Press, among other places.
Uzoamaka Nzelibe, JD
Uzoamaka Emeka Nzelibe is a Clinical Associate Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law, where she is also a Staff Attorney with the Children and Family Justice Center of the Bluhm Legal Clinic. In this position, she teaches a clinical course that focuses on the representation of women and children seeking asylum and other related forms of immigration relief in the United States. As part of this course, students represent live clients and grapple with many of the issues that experienced immigration attorneys deal with on a daily basis.
Prior to joining the Bluhm Legal Clinic, Uzoamaka Nzelibe worked for three years at Patton Boggs LLP, where she was as an Associate in both the Employment Law Group and the Immigration Law Group and represented indigent clients seeking asylum and other types of relief on a pro bono basis. Upon her move to Chicago, Illinois, Uzoamaka Nzelibe worked as an Associate for Novack and Macey, a civil litigation boutique law firm and as a contract attorney for Bank One, N.A.