Professor Maureen Sweeney has directed the Immigration Clinic at the School of Law since 2004.
Professor Sweeney tries to put into action the ideal of engaged scholarship, primarily in the fields of asylum law and the law of immigration consequences of criminal convictions. She is the principal author of a chart for criminal defense practitioners of the Immigration Consequences of Criminal Convictions Under Maryland State Law, and has spoken and trained widely in the state on this topic. Her publications include Shadow Immigration Enforcement and Its Constitutional Dangers, 104 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 227 (2014), addressing the dangers of the entanglement of criminal law enforcement in immigration enforcement; and Fact or Fiction: The Legal Construction of Immigration Removal for Crimes, 27 Yale Journal on Regulation 47 (2010), an article that explains much of the theoretical, statutory and enforcement background behind the Supreme Court’s recent Padilla v. Kentucky decision, in which the Court required criminal defense counsel to advise about possible immigration consequences of a proposed plea. She has collaborated with the Maryland Office of the Public Defender to develop a statewide response to support and train defense attorneys to carry out their new responsibilities under Padilla.
Professor Sweeney is a founding board member of the Maryland Immigrant Rights Coalition, a non-profit organization dedicated to assisting Maryland immigrants through the coordination and enhancement of pro bono representation of low-income immigrants; community education, and advocacy on behalf of immigrants. In 2015, she was awarded the Benjamin L. Cardin Distinguished Service Award by the Maryland Legal Services Corporation, an award presented yearly to an outstanding public interest lawyer whose career has been dedicated to providing, promoting or managing civil legal services to low-income Marylanders.
Professor Sweeney has published other articles in the American Journal of Public Health, the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, and the University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class.
Prior to coming to the law school, Professor Sweeney worked at different times at Associated Catholic Charities Immigration Legal Services in Baltimore; the Migrant Legal Action Program in Washington, DC; Farmworker Legal Services of North Carolina in Raleigh, NC; and the Texas Center for Immigrant Legal Assistance in Houston, Texas.
Professor Sweeney lives in Baltimore City.
