Split Summer

By Cynthia Liu

This summer, I was able to split my time interning for two very different places. At the Department of Justice, Executive Office for Immigration Review's Arlington, VA Immigration Court, I got to sit it on master calendar and individual merit hearings and draft 8 decisions throughout the course of the summer. All the interns were assigned decisions as cases came into the Judicial Law Clerk's office, and she basically served as a liaison between the interns and the six Immigration Judges sitting at the Arlington Immigration Court. Of course, we were also able to talk with the judges and discuss with them how they wanted to decide a particular case and present our opinions to them as well. Most of the judges had notes detailing how they wanted to rule on a particular case, but a lot of the times, interns could decide how particular issues within the decision came out. We mostly drafted asylum decisions, but I also drafted a few cancellation of removal decisions. Most of these cases followed the basic format of writing out the Respondent's and witness's testimony, listing documentary evidence, making a credibility finding, going through each necessary statutory element to see if the Respondent was statutorily eligible for the relief sought, and then a discretion section was added if the Immigration Judge was inclined to grant relief. Aside from working at the Court, our Judicial Law Clerk planned several field trips for us. We were able to visit the asylum office in Rosslyn and sit in on an asylum interview. This was especially enlightening because we basically witnessed how asylum applications were dealt with at the level below us. We also visited the Office of Immigration Litigation and were able to head downstairs to talk with some Department of Homeland Security lawyers who always appeared in Court opposite all the Respondents' counsel. Overall, the judges were very approachable, the judicial law clerk very organized and helpful, and the entire summer experience rewarding!

I spent the rest of my time interning at the U.S. Trade and Development Agency. USTDA is a small government agency that combines economic development goals with promotion of U.S. exports and commercial interests abroad. The agency funds small technical assistance or feasibility study projects ranging from about $200,000-$800,000 that basically set the stage for implementing much larger-scale projects to be funded by international development banks such as the World Bank, USAID, etc. The general structure of a project involves the agency delegating funds to a foreign grantee/client who will benefit from the project. The grantee/client then chooses (whether through open competition or through other means) a U.S. company to act as a contractor in carrying out the project/study. USTDA then transfers funds directly to the U.S. contractor in installments on behalf of the foreign grantee according to performance milestones that must be completed. During my internship, I helped review contracts and grants, research legal issues that came up from appropriations to Peru's treaty law, and process Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. I was able to take part in weekly Office of the General Counsel meetings and even occasionally got to sit in on Project Reviews where each region's country managers and/or regional directors would present memos with new project ideas in their region. I've definitely learned so much and really honed my research and writing skills. This internship has sparked my interest in international trade and development even more.

U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia

Ryan Majerus writes from Washington DC,

I am working for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, in the Office of Professional Development. The principal responsibility of our office is teaching D.C. police officers federal constitutional principles. Everyday there are several dozen police officers in our office who are being trained in 4th, 5th, 6th Amendment law, as well as many other topics. After a few days in this office, it becomes very clear that law enforcement play the central role in the criminal justice system. Even after the arrest, they are often the chief witness, and the thoroughness of their documentation can make or break a case. The goal of our office is that when police officers are in the field arresting someone during a drug deal, gun fight, etc., that they will consider their actions carefully so as to ensure the evidence pertaining to the suspect is not excluded at trial.
Thus far I have played a role in several interesting projects. My boss, an Assistant U.S. Attorney, has given me three memos thus far to address unresolved issues raised by law enforcement in our training programs. I wrote a memo addressing whether children or adolescents, whom the police suspect committed a crime, are the sole individuals that can consent to a search of their bedroom, or whether a parent, guardian, or grandparent can effectively give consent to have their rooms searched. I also wrote a memo focused on the Sixth Amendment standard, and this week I am researching a memo regarding whether you can conduct a Search Incident to Arrest of an automobile after the arrested individual is taken from the scene. My
major project for the semester is focused on collecting opening and closing statements from the AUSA's in our office, sifting through them, and uploading the very best on our office's shared drive as a model for AUSA's to consider before they go to court.

United States Department of Justice Criminal Division.

Wei Xiang reports from the DOJ:

In the realm of criminal law, sophistication is generally attributed
to Wall Street securities fraudsters. However, it applies all the
same to child pornographers. Thanks to EJF and the generosity of its
donors, I have the privilege of combating their savvy at the Child
Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division.



These offenders must be savvy because the mandatory minimum sentences
they face are severe (or rather, quite proportional to the harms they
perpetuate). Hence most of my projects have been research on
procedural and evidentiary issues involving defendants' use of
technology to evade capture or to preclude admissibility of electronic
evidence. For example, my first memorandum concerned the execution of
search warrants on computer hard-drives. Normally, searches must be
particularized to areas on a premise where the object sought is
logically likely to be found. But on computers where possessors of
child pornography alter file extensions and disguise file and folder
names, how can law enforcement ever find evidence if it searched only
for files entitled "pre-teen sex.jpeg"? For a former computer science
major, the opportunity to help the law develop in the face of
technological advancement has been fascinating.

However, I have to observe such development from afar because CEOS is
part of main Justice and its cases are all over the country rather
than in a particular federal district. The flip side is that I have
gotten a taste of the intricacies of forum selection by working on
prosecutions in numerous jurisdictions from Massachusetts to Alaska.
And given CEOS's advisory role to the 93 U.S. Attorney's Offices, I
have the opportunity to see a much wider range of issues than even
those that arise from CEOS's own cases. Therefore, this internship
has been quite the eye-opening experience, and I am privileged to work
with such a great group of people on such a worthy cause; for that I
am thankful to both CEOS and EJF.