The University of Nebraska College of Law is closing the doors of its immigration clinic, which has operated for nearly 30 years.
Dean Richard Moberly explained in an email that Kevin Ruser, director of the immigration clinic, decided to step away from the clinic to focus on classroom teaching. There are currently no faculty members willing to teach the clinic, which is scheduled to close at the end of the current semester.
“As with other courses, we cannot offer them to students if we don’t have a faculty member willing to teach it,” Moberly said.
In addition, he said that because of university budget concerns, the college cannot hire another staff member to teach the class. Two professors took a voluntary separation offer, and the college does not have the capacity to hire another professor.
The 28-year-old clinic provides hands-on experience to students, while providing free legal service to communities in need. Law students have worked on issues such as deportation, asylum, visas for juveniles and post-conviction cases.
The clinic provides services to the public such as community naturalization clinics and a legal assistance program. Other projects included the Schuyler project, where students helped residents better understand the immigration legal system, as well as the ‘crimmigration’ project that provided legal analysis for criminal attorneys to better understand their undocumented clients immigration consequences when facing the legal system.
The clinic will continue community education work in immigrant communities, as well as providing brief counsel and advice, through the end of the spring semester.
The clinic serviced 30-40 ongoing and new cases every year. The current caseload is being referred to local non-profits such as the Center for Immigrant & Refugee Advancement (CIRA) and Center for Legal Immigration Assistance to continue their case.
“I just want to say how grateful I am to the nonprofit community for stepping up and helping us with our clients,” Ruser said.
Roxana Cortes-Mills, legal director of CIRA, said the closure of the clinic will be a blow to efforts to help immigrants.
"Every time an office that provides qualified immigration legal representation closes its doors and reduces the number of legal service providers available to take cases in Nebraska, it affects both the immigrant refugee community and it affects us, the providers who are currently given that service, because there's less hands [in] this, there's less of us,” Cortes-Mills said.
The need for legal representation for immigrants, especially those who are undocumented or don’t have permanent residency, has skyrocketed.
In the first 10 months of 2025, there was a 329% increase in arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Nebraska, compared with the same period in 2024.
Also, the number of wrongful detention petitions, called petitions for a writ of habeas corpus, has increased. There have been 60 of them filed in the state since September, with 36 of those coming in the first two months of this year.
Cortes-Mills also said closing the clinic will be a loss for the NU law students.
“A lot of us learn our love and find our passion for this work when we take that clinic,” she said. “And with that clinic being closed, I think that the opportunity for more students to find their calling in this work ... is being closed.”
Despite the closure, Moberly said the College of Law will still provide an immigration law survey course taught by Ruser, that ‘will incorporate some experiential offerings.” As well as create externship placements for students in local non-profits and law firms.