AILA Presents Benjamin Casper Sanchez with the 2017 Elmer Fried Excellence in Teaching Award

WASHINGTON, DC - The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) will recognize Benjamin Casper Sanchez, of the University of Minnesota Law School, with the 2017 Elmer Fried Excellence in Teaching Award, recognizing an outstanding professor in the area of immigration law this week during AILA's Annual Conference in New Orleans, LA.

Clinical Professor Casper Sanchez is a first-rate professor, making an immense impact in the lives of his students and the immigrants they have counseled and for whom they have advocated. He joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School as a visiting associate professor in 2013, where, along with law students, colleagues, nonprofit immigration lawyers, and law firm pro bono volunteers, he helped build the James H. Binger Center for New Americans. Professor Casper Sanchez teaches the Center's Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic, which engages students in strategic impact litigation on behalf of immigrants and refugees. He and his students have litigated cases before immigration courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, various United States District Courts, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Before joining the law school, Professor Casper Sanchez was in private practice. From 2008 to 2013, he directed the Pro Bono Appellate Litigation Project at the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. He was previously an adjunct clinical professor of immigration law at the University of Minnesota, William Mitchell College of Law, and the University of St. Thomas School of Law. From 1997 to 2001, he was an attorney for the nonprofit immigration law office Centro Legal, where he focused on deportation defense. He graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School and attended Carleton College as an undergraduate.

Since 2011, Professor Casper Sanchez has served on AILA's amicus curiae committee and the Asylum Litigation Working Group.

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The American Immigration Lawyers Association is the national association of immigration lawyers established to promote justice, advocate for fair and reasonable immigration law and policy, advance the quality of immigration and nationality law and practice, and enhance the professional development of its members.