Legal Clinic Offers Expertise and Lessons for Refugees and Students

a group of students and professors pose as a group in the president's office waiting room — Lawyers Sumangala Bhattacharya, Sharilyn Nakata, and Isabelle Thacker (back, from left) and Claremont Canopy Director Christy Anderson (back, third from right) were joined for a group selfie by students from Pitzer and the other Claremont Colleges for a special legal clinic to assist local refugees.

For many refugees, the road to citizenship is long and arduous. But last fall at Pitzer College, a group of refugees found help. The College partnered with Claremont Canopy, a local organization that serves refugee families in the Claremont area, to host a free legal clinic.

professor bhattacharya sits with a student at a laptop computer

A trio of lawyers—Isabelle Thacker, Professor Sumangala Bhattacharya, and Sharilyn Nakata—worked with primarily Syrian families. They also supervised undergraduates from Pitzer and the other Claremont Colleges in working on the green card application process and communicating with families.

Isabel thacker works with two students at a table in a office

“There are a number of agencies that do work with low-income people on applications like this, but the lines are long, and immigrants can be preyed on by unscrupulous lawyers,” said Thacker, an immigration rights lawyer who arrived at Pitzer in 2023 with husband Strom C. Thacker, the College’s seventh president. “We wanted to create a situation in which they could feel safe and get the help they needed.”