A Pioneer in the Provision of Immigration Legal Services

Recognizing long ago that traditional legal service models often fail to meet the needs of the most vulnerable in our society, Tracy Harper, Esq., L’13 has committed her career to developing innovative and compassionate approaches to legal advocacy.

Currently managing the Catholic Charities Archdiocese of Denver’s Afghan and Refugee Program, Harper supervises a team providing immigration legal services to Colorado’s growing Afghan and refugee communities.  

After gaining experience in various nonprofit roles supporting immigrant and refugee integration throughout the Denver area, Harper has found her niche here. Empowering these populations with information and resources, she says, “the result is that Afghan humanitarian parolees in Colorado have been overwhelmingly successful in obtaining asylum and exercising autonomy over their legal status and their immigration journey going forward.”

Advocating for the rights of underserved and historically excluded communities has been the driving force in Harper’s law career—indeed, it’s what led her to Roger Williams University School of Law in the first place.

A few years after earning her undergraduate degree at the University of Colorado-Boulder, Harper experienced a defining moment that set her on the path to law school. When health insurance rates suddenly quadrupled at her job, she attended an information session with her employer hoping to gain insight into the market forces behind the substantial increase. Instead, she left the meeting without answers—frustrated and angry not only for herself, but on behalf of her colleagues, many of whom were lower-wage employees who lacked the resources to challenge or question the policies. 

The experience left Harper with “a flash of insight,” she recalls. “If I go to law school, I can stop things like this from happening to people who don’t have the education and resources to fight for their rights.”

 

RWU Law’s commitment to social justice and public service set the school apart from others in Harper’s search for the right law school.  “It was the public interest program that really [drew] me,” she says. “I read about the Feinstein Center and the Street Law program, and something said to me that this school would get me where I wanted to go.”

Harper immersed herself in the public interest opportunities offered at RWU Law, joining the Association for Public Interest Law (APIL) student group and helping to establish a chapter of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). She recalls attending “as many of Laurie [Barron]’s public interest potlucks as I could to meet others who shared my passion and determination to use the lawyer power for community good.”

Experiential learning opportunities like Alternative Spring Break—which she participated in all three years—and a judicial clerkship with Justice Indeglia at the Rhode Island Supreme Court proved invaluable for Harper. 

However, it was Harper’s participation in the Immigration Clinic with Professor Mary Holper that emerged as the most transformative experience. “Within weeks of this class, I was hooked,” she says. “I realized that this was an area of law that needed advocates to ensure fairness for the world’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged people. The last semester of my 3L year I worked as a student attorney in the immigration law clinic and started on the path I find myself today.”

Harper’s current work at Catholic Charities of Denver primarily focuses on family reunification for Afghan asylees evacuated in 2021, as well as securing green cards for refugees, asylees, and Afghan Special Immigrants who supported the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

Looking ahead, Harper aims to create a lawyering model that brings legal services directly to clients in familiar spaces, like mosques and other community-based organizations where they are already receiving non-legal support during the integration process.  

As Harper explains, “There are more displaced persons in the world than at any time in our recorded history. There are not enough immigration attorneys, forget immigration attorneys with asylum expertise and knowledge of other humanitarian pathways” to meet the growing demand. With this in mind, Harper remains committed to “being a pioneer and a revolutionary in the provision of immigration legal services” by finding innovative ways to ethically and effectively support as many people as possible.