Students and faculty members with UCLA School of Law’s Criminal Defense Clinic played a key role in securing the release last week of an at-risk inmate from a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center as part of the clinic’s broader effort to reduce the acute risks to prisoners from the coronavirus.

Members of three UCLA School of Law clinics are part of a coalition including people who are incarcerated in Los Angeles County jails, lawyers and activists that has sued the county and county sheriff’s department seeking the release of medically vulnerable people and the implementation of heightened health and safety standards in jails during the coronavirus pandemic.