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ILCM Wins 2015 Minnesota Lawyer Circle of Excellence Award

Posted on May 05 2016

Pictured is John Keller, Executive Director of ILCM 

ILCM attorneys John Keller, Sheila Stuhlman, and Julia Decker, along with attorneys from The Center for New Americans and a pro bono team from Faegre Baker Daniels, won the 2015 Minnesota Lawyer Circle of Excellence award. This award recognizes all of their hard work in securing a victory in the Supreme Court which will help protect thousands of people from deportation because of unjust paraphernalia convictions.

Moones Mellouli, a math professor at the University of Missouri, was deported in 2012 due to the possession of drug paraphernalia; several adderall pills were found in his sock. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the government cannot deport a lawful resident through inferences alone; instead, the crime of conviction must be a deportable offense. Nothing in the record identified the drug as a controlled substance, which would be key to the sock being considered “paraphernalia.”

Ben Casper, director of the Center for New Americans at the University of Minnesota Law School said, “it was gratifying to be able to bring some sense of proportionality to the deportation laws, which has really been lacking in recent years.” The Center for New Americans, which the ILCM helped to create, played a substantial role in fighting to advance this case to the Supreme Court.