Spring rolled into summer with Suzie Pritchett “making every life change imaginable.” Her daughter, Viola, was born in late May and, along with partner Joe Moose, the family was planning a big move from Wyoming to Iowa. Pritchett is an Iowa native. Still, the family was “ripping off the Band-Aid,” making a big move from from the arid West to the humid Midwest. “We were, like, ‘What is this air? Oh, that’s humidity,’ ” Pritchett said on a day in early July when you had to drip dry in Des Moines. She was less than a week into a new role as director of the Drake Legal Clinic. Her career has been focused on immigration and human rights law and advocacy. Pritchett came to Drake from the University of Wyoming, where she was an associate professor and faculty director of the Family and Immigrant Justice Clinic at the UW College of Law. While there, students take on cases and advocacy work to combat gender-based violence — locally and abroad — in the areas of family law and immigration. Before joining the permanent law school faculty, she co-directed the Center for International Human Rights Law and Advocacy. She has clerked for the Executive Office for Immigration Review in the U.S. Department of Justice and for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. She has also worked in private practice representing clients in federal immigration matters. 

When was the last time you lived in Iowa?
I grew up on a farm and acreage in Plymouth County and my parents still live there, so I’m very excited about my relocation back to Iowa. I don’t think they ever thought they’d see the day when I would come on back. I went to Grinnell College for my undergraduate degree and went abroad for several years and got a graduate degree in the United Kingdom. I was in Europe three years. So I had always been interested in traveling internationally, and on the graduate program I did I really fell at the intersection of my interest in human rights and development, and particularly women’s human rights. So I was drawn to a graduate program at the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University in the south of England. After I finished my master’s degree, I got a job working for a women’s rights organization in London. It was kind of a mix of educational job opportunities that took me over there and the opportunity to be abroad. And then I came back and got my law degree at the University of Iowa.

Did you anticipate that immigration policy was going to take a dramatic turn after the 2016 presidential election?
There is never a dull moment; things are changing every day. My scholarly and practice areas of interest have largely focused on immigration. Every day you wake up and something has changed; I can’t remember a time since I’ve been in practice where things have been changing so rapidly at the policy level. And that’s made it both an exciting time but also a daunting time to to be an immigration attorney. Keeping up with the changes is incredibly difficult. And then at the same time you have people whose lives are being impacted by these policy changes. There’s a real human aspect to what’s going on. 

I think that almost everyone across the board has been shocked about both the breadth from things like the termination of the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program for the noncitizens who came to this country as children to the travel ban to now the family separations at the border as a deterrent measure.

I’m in an interesting position. I have transitioned from running an immigration clinic at the University of Wyoming where we were doing direct representation for individuals who had fled some form of persecution in their country of origin and were applying for asylum in the United States, many of whom, particularly women, had fled domestic violence and had crossed the border with their children and were asking the United States government for protection from domestic violence by an intimate partner. Now I have moved into more of an administrative role here at Drake where I’m helping to direct the clinics and experiential programs that Drake has to offer its students while also thinking about how I can bring with me that immigration practice and share my experience as an immigration law practitioner with students here at Drake.

I have a unique opportunity right now to make some some scholarly relation to what’s going on and in my position as the director of clinics and as an associate professor here at the law school to write on some of these issues and use that form of advocacy.

But I’m also excited to teach the immigration law course in the fall because students will have the opportunity to really take some of these policy decisions that are being made on a daily basis at the national level and analyze them for themselves and ask, you know, is this what we want our immigration law and policy to look like, do we want completely closed borders, do we want to open borders, do we want something in the middle, and if something in the middle is the answer, what does that look like? There’s a real opportunity to kind of inspire the next generation of immigration as kids who are going to go out and be in the trenches or, you know, work for the government and make some of these policy decisions. 

What was it like to practice immigration law in a state (Wyoming) that doesn’t accept refugees?
It was very interesting because in Laramie there is a fair number of international students, some of whom we actually represented because they were either impacted by the travel ban or some situation in their country had changed during the course of their studies. You know, a doctorate program can be seven, eight years long; maybe when they left their country everything was fine but it subsequently devolved into some sort of turmoil. Libyan students are an example of that. So our clinic would help those individuals apply for asylum. So practicing law in Wyoming was interesting because you have a different demographic who needs help. Also in Wyoming there are only a handful of immigration law practitioners, maybe five at the most, and so our clinic was one of the few and certainly the only source of pro bono immigration representation. That was extra obligation for us in terms of providing a service to those people who who are unable to afford a private attorney.

There are some notable immigration specialists in Des Moines.
I’m in the process of reaching out to the immigration bar here. I know that the Drake Law School has had a close relation with Justice for Our Neighbors, which is a nonprofit that provides free legal services. And we’re hoping to continue that relationship. But I am really excited to get to know the immigration bar here in Des Moines. One of the challenges of this rapidly changing policy is that it’s hard to know as a practitioner what’s happening on a day-to-day basis. And one of the ways that I feel like immigration lawyers are really lucky is that we have a great bar organization called the American Immigration Lawyers Association. It is kind of a strength in numbers thing where immigration attorneys come together and we can share knowledge of what happened at the court last week, or how a judge is ruling on these types of cases, and there isn’t a lot of negative competition among lawyers.

Do you plan to make any changes at the law clinic? 
Drake has always been extremely strong in its training for law students to go out into the community and legal community and have excellent hands-on learning opportunities. So I’m really looking forward to continuing to support the excellent programs that already exist here and to think about how from day one, students who come to Drake have a real hands-on learning experience.

I’m not waiting until students are in their second or third years, but looking for ways to integrate more of that hands-on learning into even the first-year curriculum so that we can continue to produce students that are ready upon graduation.

Did you have a long-range plan to return to Iowa?
As I have moved through my career and through various experiences and spending a substantial amount of time abroad, I’ve been able to kind of home in on what’s important to me. I lived in India as an undergrad, I obviously went in the UK for a while during my graduate studies, I’ve lived in New York City for a substantial amount of time; what’s become clear to me is what I find fulfilling and what kind of fuels me is feeling connected to my community. And that’s something that I found very hard to cultivate living in a city like London or New York, and even in Wyoming as much as I was living in a small town. I mean, Laramie is 30,000 people and the entire state of Wyoming has as many people in it as the city of Des Moines. The thing about coming back to Iowa and being part of the dialogue around immigration and the diversity of our communities, and how we as a state want to hold ourselves out to to noncitizens, and what we want our state to look like civically appealed to me more and more. There was that kind of siren call going back to the place you’re from and being part of the important dialogues that take place there just became stronger and stronger as I really settled into my career. So when this opportunity came up, to be a part of that conversation and be a part of the Drake clinic seemed like an amazing opportunity. Oh, yeah, it’s exciting. I’m so back.