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Penn Law lecturer Jennifer Nagda testifies before Congress on family separation and migrant detention centers

July 16, 2019

Jennifer Nagda
Jennifer Nagda
Nagda is Director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights and an adjunct lecturer-in-law in Penn Law’s Interdisciplinary Child Advocacy Clinic.

Last week, Director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights and Penn Law lecturer Jennifer Nagda testified before the United States Congress as part of hearing held by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on family separation and the conditions for children in detention facilities. During her live testimony, Nagda debunked the contention that children are no longer being separated from their families under current immigration policy and argued that separation was contrary to the child’s best interest in every case, particularly since the average age of the children separated is seven years old.

Nagda also submitted written testimony describing her work at the Young Center, where she focuses on child-parent separation, children’s rights, and developing a best interests standard for unaccompanied immigrant children. At Penn Law’s Gittis Center for Clinical Legal Studies, she is an adjunct lecturer-in-law in the Interdisciplinary Child Advocacy Clinic.

Read Nagda’s written testimony here, and watch her oral testimony here (beginning at 4:36:20).