Selene contacted New Mexico Legal Aid and began appealing Judge Ramcyk`s decision. With Selene`s approval, her attorney, Riley Masse, contacted the ACLU of New Mexico and informed our legal team of the discrimination she faced. Prior to attending UNM Law School, Nadine Padilla was a community organizer for nine years. She will tell anyone who asks, « Ensuring justice for minority communities disproportionately affected by pollution brought me to law school. » Now, in addition to the community organization, Nadine is a community lawyer. In collaboration with the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, Nadine has joined the second class of Child and Justice Family Fellows who want to advocate for NM`s most vulnerable children and families. Through political and legal advocacy, Nadine has tackled air pollution, which focuses on low-income communities of color in Albuquerque, particularly in the Southern Valley. Since air pollution is a major driver of respiratory illness in children, Nadine`s project aimed to mitigate and, in some cases, eliminate a major cause of childhood illness. Reducing the number of polluting industries in vulnerable communities would lead to improved air quality, leading to reduced health risks. During her fellowship, Nadine was appointed Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet of the New Mexico Department of Indian Affairs, a victory for children and families throughout the state of New Mexico.

Transformative Advocacy Fellows work with a nonprofit host organization in New Mexico. If the organisation is not a civil law service provider, the host organisation must demonstrate that it is able to provide adequate supervision by an experienced lawyer. Denali was born and raised in New Mexico and earned a Bachelor of Arts in History from New Mexico State University in 2015. During law school, she worked as an articling student in the habeas division of the Public Defense Attorney`s Office, the New Mexico Innocence and Justice Project, and the Campaign for Fair Justice for Young People in Washington, D.C. She has taught criminal and constitutional law. She was the 2018 Haywood Burns Memorial Fellow through the National Lawyers Guild and is currently the Regional Legal Observer Coordinator for the New Mexico Guild. An eviction order has various long-term legal consequences, but families are not actually evicted until the sheriff comes to execute a writ of restitution — the court order that allows the sheriff to evict the tenant and restore the landlord`s property. If, as the Miami Police Department did, the Bernalillo County Sheriff`s Office stopped law enforcement, it would bring some relief to families and individuals in our county. Each fellowship must include a new project aimed at eliminating racial disparities and improving the health or well-being of New Mexico`s most vulnerable children and families through legal advocacy and policy/advocacy work in tribal, state, or federal courts and government agencies. One of the project`s greatest successes was the creation of a weekly table at the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court.

At this table, Riley offers free brief advice and information to litigants when they come to housing court. In addition, it helps litigants fill out forms, also free of charge. During the project, Riley represented on the ground in cases where it became clear that additional advocacy was needed. Similarly, Riley and New Mexico Legal Aid`s housing unit collaborated with the UNM School of Law`s Economic Justice Clinic, as well as Harvard`s Access to Justice Lab, to study the impact of representation and various other levels of service in eviction cases. By reviewing the results of the study, legal service providers are able to provide more effective services to low-income families, which will hopefully reduce the rate of eviction in the long run. On June 25, our legal team filed a complaint on Selene`s behalf with the U.S. Department of Justice`s Civil Rights Division, asking them to investigate the discrimination incident and require that Judge Ramczyk and Metropolitan Court staff be trained on their obligations to provide shelters to deaf people under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The fellowship provides new lawyers with the opportunity to positively influence the social determinants of the health and well-being of vulnerable children and families in New Mexico`s most underserved communities through legal advocacy and policy work. The court has the power and duty to do more, including stopping deportation hearings altogether, with exceptions for certain emergencies until the pandemic recedes. The court says it has no legal authority to stop deportation processes. They say our state`s landlord-tenant law requires courts to continue to prosecute evictions, despite the health risks and the inability of many to show up by phone or video.

The court misinterpreted the law. Our state constitution gives the Supreme Court, not the legislature, absolute power to control courtroom proceedings, including the power to suspend deportation hearings. This type of advocacy is close to the heart of many members of the UNM legal community.