Laila L. Hlass
Co-Principal Investigator
Professor Laila L. Hlass teaches and writes about the convergence of the immigration enforcement and criminal legal regimes, immigrant children, and experiential pedagogy, and co-directs Tulane’s Immigrant Rights Clinic. In particular, her scholarship interrogates the policies, doctrines, and practices within the immigration legal system that perpetuate racial subordination. Her most recent law review articles have appeared or are forthcoming in the California Law Review, Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, American University Law Review, and Utah Law Review. She regularly speaks and appears in the news regarding migration, refugees and immigrant children and has written op-eds for Slate, the Boston Globe and Ms. Magazine. Professor Hlass serves on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana and the Clinical Law Review.
In 2022, she was recognized with the Elisabeth S. “Lisa” Brodyaga Award from the National Immigration Project for outstanding contributions to immigrant rights. She was honored as a 2021-22 Bellows Scholar with Prof. Mary Yanik for their research regarding habeas litigation of prolonged and punitive immigrant detention. Prof. Hlass was awarded a 2018 Carol Lavin Bernick Faculty Grant to develop pedagogical films for experiential faculty, as part of the Legal Interviewing and Language Access Film Project.
Before joining Tulane Law School in 2017, Prof. Hlass taught at Boston University School of Law as a clinical associate professor. She received her B.A. from Rice University, J.D. from Columbia Law School, and LLM with distinction from Georgetown University Law Center. While in law school, she co-founded the Student Hurricane Network, which recruited and placed more than 5,500 law students in pro bono assignments in regions affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. After law school, she was awarded a Chadbourne & Parke Fellowship, working as a staff attorney at the Door, a youth legal services agency. Later, she was awarded an Equal Justice America Fellowship and an Equal Justice Works Fellowship to work as a staff attorney in Loyola New Orleans’ Immigration Clinic.