“When we don’t welcome those in need, we are not living up to the ideals of our nation,” Sally Stevens said, discussing the fellowship she recently established at Maine Law with the Refugee and Human Rights Clinic (RHRC).
Stevens, a lawyer and philanthropist with a home in Bethel, Maine, has a long history of upholding our nation’s ideals by supporting access to justice for those seeking refugee and asylum status in the U.S. Since 2020, her generous donations to the RHRC at Maine Law has enabled law students to provide legal assistance to hundreds of clients seeking immigration and asylum relief. In 2024, the RHRC was honored to establish a fellowship in her name.
The Sally L. Stevens Immigration Law Fellow supports one teaching fellow who works full-time with faculty, students, and clients of the RHRC. This year’s inaugural fellow is Bri Zhuang, a recent graduate of Boston University School of Law who shares Stevens’ passion for immigration and human rights.
Their interest in this issue is deep-seated as Zhuang’s parents immigrated to the U.S. from China and they pursued work with immigrant communities throughout their undergraduate and graduate education. They worked with immigrants in San Francisco, Boston, and, now, Portland.
“I am working with communities I have not had much experience with before, including those from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, and other West African countries,” Zhuang explained. In addition to English, Zhuang speaks French and Mandarin fluently, and said they are excited to flex their language skills a bit in this new endeavor.
Most rewarding so far, however, Zhuang said, is the outreach part of the fellowship, which has them visiting local schools and community organizations sharing know-your-rights information to immigrant youth and other Maine immigrants. A key part of the fellowship is working with and assisting immigrant youth in Maine and beyond. Portland and Maine in general are close-knit communities, they reflected, so a little bit of outreach can have an immense impact.
This outreach work also took Zhuang to Tijuana as part of an ongoing collaborative project RHRC has with Ibero-American University School of Law (IBERO), Loyola Law School, and the University of Wisconsin School of Law.
Professor Anna Welch, Founding Director of the RHRC and Managing Co-Director of Maine Law’s clinical programs, said Stevens’ gift and the new fellowship are transformational for the RHRC. The need for these services will always outpace their availability, but this gift significantly expands RHRC’s radius of impact in Maine.
“This most recent donation allows us to expand our work to potentially hundreds of additional individuals, including to more of Maine’s unaccompanied immigrant youth as well as asylum seekers in Maine and beyond to our southern border and even into Mexico,” Welch said. “We could not be more grateful.”
