By Debra Bruno
September 5, 2017
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并不是说博士有什么不好.D. in philosophy from Columbia University, followed by tenure-track offers at schools. 但是对于Sirine Shebaya来说, today a senior staff attorney with the advocacy group Muslim Advocates, 学者的生活感觉有点太理论化了. 她的项目进行到一半了, she says, “I realized I actually wanted to be working with people and having an immediate impact.”
这种认识并没有阻止谢巴亚, today 38, 从完成学业到找工作, in part because a job offer would help the native of Beirut stay in the United States. 当报价来的时候, 她说她以为, “10年后，如果我只是一名哲学教授, 这样会满意吗??”
Still searching, Shebaya became a Greenwall Fellow in Bioethics and Public Policy at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. 从那个奖学金中, Shebaya realized that she really wanted to go into law: “It is intellectually rigorous, but it also impacts people directly and allows you to create change in the world,” she says.
在耶鲁大学法学院，她进一步缩小了自己的研究范围. Her initial interest in human rights and international law drew her to work for the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project, today called the International Refugee Assistance Project, 还有一个人权诊所, 工人和移民权利诊所, 还有一个民权和国家安全诊所.
With all that – including one immigration case she had the chance to argue as a law student intern before the Connecticut Supreme Court – she decided her mission was “to identify voices that are marginalized and try to work to give access to those voices, and to help the people who are outsiders but who are really impacted by insiders’ decisions,” she says.
Working first at the ACLU of Maryland (during the Obama administration, from 2012 to 2016), 她说她对移民的权利产生了兴趣, 特别是在移民执法方面. “There were Fourth and Fifth amendment problems when local jails detained people for ICE [Immigrations and Customs Enforcement] without a warrant,” she says. One success for Shebaya and her colleagues was convincing Maryland, with the support of then-Gov. Martin O’Malley, to adopt a statewide policy against detaining people for immigration violations without a judicial warrant, she says. (See the 最新的咨询 from the Maryland Attorney General on enforcing federal immigration law.)
Before that, she says, many people were ending up in the “deportation pipeline” after being stopped for having a broken taillight or selling phone cards without a license.
Shebaya also worked briefly as director of the Virginia Justice Program for the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights (CAIR) Coalition.
After President Trump instituted the first round of his travel ban shortly after taking office in January 2017, Shebaya决定带上她的两个年幼的儿子, 包括一个四个月大的婴儿, and her husband, to Washington Dulles International Airport to offer legal help to foreigners who might have been affected by the ban.
那天她在机场一直呆到凌晨1点.m.，试图进入美国.S. Customs officials. She ended up on the phone with a Yemeni father in Michigan who was trying to bring in his two sons on immigrant visas (Dulles was their first stop in the United States). By the time the legal aid center had convinced a judge to allow lawyers to have access to people who were lawful permanent residents, 兄弟俩已被送回也门.
“We had a group of really great folks from big law firms to help place cases with pro bono teams,” she says, 此外还有一些移民靠谱的滚球平台. Today, Shebaya is a board member of the Dulles Justice Coalition, 是针对最初的旅行禁令而成立的.
自5月以来，谢巴亚一直在穆斯林倡导组织工作. “The main thing that has compelled me is this is the community that has for so many years been the subject of targeted attacks,” she says. “But now, they’re being attacked in ways that are so egregious and so personal, that I wanted to contribute to the community being able to fight on its own behalf.”
She points out that the group prides itself on fighting for civil rights for all Americans. “我们扎根于穆斯林社区, but also the broader south Asian community and the Arab community and other communities of color,” she says.
Some of the issues on her agenda began long before Trump was elected. “Obama deported more people than any other president,” she notes. Now, though, there is a rising awareness of civil rights issues.
Asked if she feels hopeful about the future, though, and she gives a careful answer. “有些部分让我谨慎乐观, 还有让我感到非常悲观的部分,” she says. “It’s wonderful to feel people are activated and that community groups that don’t always have the mainstream stage are speaking up.”
But, she adds, “there are some insidious changes at the agency level” of the federal government “that we may not be able to correct.”
