Clients
Most of our clients are low income residents of Pennsylvania. They come to us from a rich array of cultures, religions, affiliations, and backgrounds. To learn more about our clients, see some of our student, alumni and client testimonials.
CARES students won protection for and prevented the deportation of:
- An Iraqi family who fled Iraq because of persecution on account of giving aid to the American troops and also persecution on account of their religion.
- A university professor and political activist who escaped to the United States after a terrorist group tried to murder him.
- Victims of gender-based persecution and domestic violence from the Middle East, Africa, and Mexico.
- A teenager from Africa who was abducted by a rebel army and forced to fight in its war against the government.
- The wife of an African photo-journalist who had been detained, tortured, and repeatedly raped by a rebel army to punish her for her husband's activities.
- A woman from the Middle East who was afraid she would be the victim of an honor killing if she were forced to return to her home country.
Civil Justice Clinic
students:
- Obtained subsidized housing for a homeless father and four children by successfully advocating with the local housing authority.
- Reunited a mother with her two year old daughter, who had been taken to an undisclosed location out of state by her father, in violation of an existing Court Order.
- Cleared the record of a woman who had been falsely accused of child abuse by her troubled 15 year old niece.
- Prevented the eviction from public housing of a mother and two of her children, who were at risk of losing their home due to the criminal behavior of her older son, who no longer lived in the home.
- Assisted a mother in regaining custody of her teenaged son, who had been in the custody of his grandmother.
Farmworker Legal Aid Clinic
students:
- Gained $6000 for a migrant farmworker in the EEOC mediation process.
- Reunited a quadriplegic Mexican national with his family in the United States. The client had been injured while living and working in the United States, but was returned to Mexico by the U.S. hospital. In Mexico, he received substandard care and became dangerously ill. VLS students expedited a four-year green card process to take place in the two months before his 21st birthday, upon which date his opportunity to immigrate would have been forever foreclosed.
- Negotiated a new lease for seven clients who were in eviction proceedings, allowing them to remain in an apartment building that had been their home for eight years.
- Cleared their client of more than $35,000 in medical bills after a tractor flipped over onto him while he was working for an employer who carried no workers' compensation insurance.
Federal Tax Clinic
students:
- Convinced the IRS that their client, a victim of domestic violence, was not jointly and severally liable for over $10,000 in taxes incurred by her abusive ex-husband.
- Gained numerous clients tax refunds of over $4,000, attributable largely to the earned income tax credit (EITC), one of the federal government's most important anti-poverty federal transfer programs.
- Cleared their client from thousands of dollars in tax liability by proving to the IRS that their client, a migrant worker from Mexico who faced tax liability from income he supposedly earned at a meatpacking plant in the Midwest, was not responsible for the liability because he lived abroad at the time of the alleged liability arose.
- Negotiated a compromise of an income tax liability based upon their client's economic hardship and physical disability.
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