The Challenges of Protecting Refugees at the Border During Humanitarian Crises

Join us for this year's Ellen Catherine Gstalder (C‘98) Memorial Lecture, featuring Professor Andrew I. Schoenholtz. 

From October 2023 through January 2024, Customs and Border Protection officials processed nearly one million people at and in between U.S. ports of entry. Almost 400,000 have arrived in families.  Nearly 50,000 unaccompanied children have also sought safety in this way.  As a significant number of new arrivals over the last decade have applied for asylum, a lack of resources has resulted in an overwhelmed asylum system.   Likewise, civil society lacks the capacity to provide legal representation and social services during humanitarian crises.

How might the U.S. government best respond to such large numbers of children, women, and men arriving at the U.S. southern border from countries in the Western hemisphere, protect those in need of safety, and ensure public confidence in the federal government’s control of that border?

Andrew I. Schoenholtz is a Professor from Practice at Georgetown Law, where he co-directs the Center for Applied Legal Studies, an asylum clinic where students represent refugees fleeing persecution who seek asylum in the United States.  He also directs the Certificate in Refugees and Humanitarian Emergencies, serves as the faculty director of the Human Rights Institute, and oversees Georgetown’s Asylum Advocacy Volunteer Assistance Project.

Prior to teaching at Georgetown, Professor Schoenholtz served as Deputy Director of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. He has conducted fact-finding missions in Haiti, Cuba, Ecuador, Germany, Croatia, Bosnia, Malawi, and Zambia to study the root causes of forced migration, refugee protection, long-term solutions to mass migration emergencies, and humanitarian relief operations. Dr. Schoenholtz holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. from Brown University.