The Chacón Center will continue the law school Immigration Clinic’s important asylum and deportation defense work while increasing the number of students the clinic can train.
Marco Chacón, PhD, and his wife, Debbie Chacón, had had enough. After a constant barrage of media coverage showing immigrants being subjected to a double standard of justice, including the “monstrous practice” of family separations at the Southern border, they knew they had to do something.
“History teaches us that there are certain things we cannot turn a blind eye to,” Marco Chacón says. “If you remain silent, you end up being complicit, and to the degree that we can change that, we must act.”
As longtime friends of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, the Chacóns became aware of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, which has been serving clients for over 20 years, and knew they had found a way to help Maryland’s immigrant community.
Impressed by the professionalism of the student attorneys who are guided by seasoned faculty, the couple donated $5 million to establish the Chacón Center for Immigrant Justice as a way to continue and expand the work of the clinic.
“We realized that these people are passionate about the work they do and optimistic in their ideals. What’s better than to join forces with people that have such passionate hearts?” he says.
Read more about the Chacón Center for Immigrant Justice in CATALYST magazine.
You can read the Spring 2021 issue of CATALYST magazine, which features stories on UMB students preparing and administering COVID-19 vaccines at the UMB vaccination clinic at the SMC Campus Center; research related to COVID-19 across all of our schools; features on the first recipient of The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings ’76 Scholarship Endowment, the National Center for School Mental Health, the Healing Youth Alliance, comedian-actor-doctor Ken Jeong, and much more at CATALYST magazine.