Yale Law Grad Causing Trump Headaches On Immigration

Before she attended Yale Law, all the way back in high school, Becca Heller was voted “most likely to debate with a teacher.” Now, says her friend Katherine Isokawa, “she’s most likely to argue with the president.” Heller is the founder of the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), and has been leading her network of 2,000 lawyers in their fight against the Trump administration’s efforts to block refugees and travelers from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. Critics of Heller and her organization say they put the plight of foreigners over national security. “[T]here can be no such thing as an immigration policy that puts the national interest first” with groups like IRAP, Dave Wilcox, executive director of the Immigration Reform Law Institute, told the New York Times. Such groups treat the immigration system “like a giant global welfare program.” This profile depicts Heller, who won a humanitarian award for her work on hunger and housing while a student at Dartmouth and received a Fulbright Scholarship to work on nutrition policy in Malawi, as a globetrotting crusader carving her own path to helping people desperate to get to the U.S. Heller started IRAP eight years ago as a student organization at Yale Law, and to date has helped more than 3,000 refugees resettle in the U.S. “It’s a really good time to be leading an army of lawyers on behalf of refugee rights,” she told the Times. “Expect more lawsuits.”