From early volunteer work in immigration court to international human rights fieldwork and faculty-directed legal research, students begin applying legal concepts to real-world situations well before graduation through DePaul Law’s Program of Excellence (POE) in Immigration Law & Human Rights Law, which supports a wide range of academic, experiential and co-curricular opportunities that reflect the breadth and depth of this important practice area.   

The program includes two legal clinics central to student training:  the Asylum & Immigration Clinic (AILC), directed by Professor of Legal Practice & AILC Director Sioban Albiol, and the International Human Rights Law Clinic (IHRLC), founded and supervised by Professor of Legal Practice & International Human Rights Law Institute (IHRLI) Executive Director Elisabeth Ward.   

Students focused on asylum and immigration law practice gain hands-on training through the AILC.  Under the supervision of Professor Albiol and AILC Clinic Adjunct Professor Audra Santucci, students have successfully represented asylum-seekers and refugees, reunited families, secured lawful status for survivors of domestic violence, trafficking and other crimes and have even seen their clients sworn in as U.S. citizens while collaborating with immigrant-serving nonprofit organizations. 

Rose Keel (’26) illustrates how students can begin engaging with the POE early in their legal education. As a first-year student, Keel volunteered to support pro se respondents at the Chicago Immigration Court through an AILC initiative and assisted at legal aid immigration organizations throughout the city. She also participated in a legal skills workshop on client interviewing held by Chicago Volunteer Legal Services (CVLS), a highly respected organization that has provided pro bono civil legal services for more than 60 years. This experience led to her becoming an intake volunteer at CVLS, then an intern in its Special Immigration Juvenile Status and Immigration Programs, and finally an extern and part-time employee. After graduation, Keel will serve as an Immigrant Justice Corps fellow with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. 

Other students engage with the POE through clinical as well as academic work. Through DePaul Law's joint degree program opportunities, Tess Pollins (’27) is simultaneously earning her JD and MS in International Public Service, while also running nonprofit Project Lots of Love—an organization she founded in 2021 that is dedicated to serving orphans in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, through education, health care and holistic support beyond basic needs.  

Pollins also has been involved with the IHRLC for two years now and describes the experience as “without a doubt the most valuable part of my legal career.” She points in particular to the Institute’s international fieldwork component. As part of that work, her class traveled to Cambodia last year to meet with international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and learn about the genocide carried out by Khmer Rouge regime. In 2026, students will travel to Timor-Leste, also in Southeast Asia, to study human rights violations stemming from Indonesian occupation, with a focus on intimate partner violence. For her advanced independent research project, Pollins is advocating for change in Tanzania by making health care more accessible to orphans.  She also is working with the country's National Health Insurance Fund to make it easier for these children to get identification documents.  

For some students, engagement with the POE begins even before law school.  As a DePaul undergraduate student, Maddy Ottenweller Schueler (’26) engaged with the program through a study abroad course directed by Professor Alberto Coll, also participating in international NGO work.  She further engaged through an undergraduate course taught by Professor Ward, who inspired her to continue down this path by attending DePaul Law.  

Now a DePaul Law student, Ottenweller Schueler has gone to Rwanda, Tanzania and Cambodia, and she credits IHRLC trips for enhancing her “clinical work, which culminated in a report on the role of hybrid tribunals [(i.e., temporary mixed courts established to prosecute international crimes such as war crimes or genocide by blending domestic and international staff, laws and jurisdiction)] in post-conflict settings.” Among her other activities in the field are competing at the UC Davis Asylum and Refugee Law National Moot Court Competition as a 2L and working as a research assistant for Adjunct Professor and Former University Ombudsman Craig Mousin, helping him examine the intersection of the First Amendment and asylum and immigration law, particularly how the Free Exercise Clause applies to religious nonprofits supporting asylum seekers at the southern U.S. border.  

The PEO is further supported by student opportunities offered through the International Human Rights Law Institute, which engages students in human rights education, research and advocacy around issues such as post-conflict justice, gender-based violence and human trafficking, while the DePaul Migration Collaborative connects students, faculty and community partners around research, advocacy and policy initiatives related to migration and mobility.  

Across all of these experiences, students consistently identify DePaul Law’s faculty as central to the POE’s impact. Keel respects them for instilling in students “that being a competent attorney requires more than doctrinal knowledge, and [clinic faculty] have taught me trauma-informed client-facing skills, like client interviewing.” Learning about the intersection of human rights, immigration and other areas of law, such as family or domestic violence law, has been an invaluable education for Ottenweller Schueler who acknowledges that these experiences “shape the way I approach legal advocacy and provide me with transferable skills and perspectives that extend to other areas of law.” Pollins is similarly grateful to IHRLI for giving her a “foundational understanding of the field that I will utilize in the future,” and adds that “this program goes beyond preparing students for the bar; rather, it prepares students to be equipped to enter and contribute to the field of international human rights law.”