Middle East Refugee Protection Project

Nine years ago, Jayne began a cutting-edge holistic legal program in Latin America and Haiti to support women and children refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) fleeing violence and torture. Four years ago, she moved our innovative refugee protection model to the Middle East on behalf of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) fleeing violence and torture in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Jayne runs the project with support from lawyers across Reed Smith and the legal profession, as well as medical experts, psychologists, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Jayne and her teams have represented hundreds of women refugees in the Middle East in cases involving kidnapping, sexual torture, rape, domestic violence, forced marriage and labor exploitation.

Jayne has led dozens of missions to Jordan, Lebanon, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Greece, where her pro bono teams have interviewed several hundred refugees and torture victims, and identified dozens of the most at-risk survivors, for whom they are developing comprehensive legal protection strategies.

Many of these pro bono clients in Jordan and Lebanon are torture survivors; many are women and children suffering from war trauma and gender-based violence, including those at risk of "honor killing" and retaliation for seeking access to justice in their countries.

Recent Achievements

In 2018-19, despite considerable opposition, seven refugee families in Jordan and Greece were relocated to North America, Europe, the UK and Australia.

In 2017, in the face of numerous obstacles, Jayne and her team successfully relocated 31 clients from Jordan, Syria and Iraq to Australia, France, Germany, England and the United States.

Baby Sham. In 2017, after many obstacles, Jayne and Reed Smith's Refugee Protection team finally successfully relocated Baby Sham and her family to safety in the United States, despite their Syrian nationality and the President's immigration travel banning people from that country. As reported by The American Lawyer on January 29, 2017, Baby Sham was among our child refugee clients who required urgent medical care, but were "left in limbo by Trump's order."

Sham's family had originally fled from Syria to Egypt at the beginning of the war, but was unable to survive there, so fled to Jordan, where Sham was born without an eye and with other craniofacial deformities. In a monumental effort, Jayne's team worked with doctors and government officials in the U.S., Jordan and Spain to find a hospital willing to provide Sham with the surgery she so critically required. They also facilitated visas for the family, working tirelessly with UNHCR in Jordan and Washington, DC to expedite their refugee resettlement case.

So far, Sham has had three craniofacial surgeries, and, in February 2017, received a prosthetic eye implant. In October 2017, Sham, her parents and her three siblings were finally resettled to safety in the U.S..

On behalf of on behalf of refugees in the Middle East, Jayne and her teams have also:

• Supported torture survivors, rape victims, refugees with life-threatening medical issues, the disabled, and elders.
• Helped refugees receive asylum or humanitarian visas to allow them to gain permanent status in Europe, the United States, and Canada.
• Represented women at risk of honor killing, including a young mother and her 4-year-old girl, who was conceived through rape and born in the detention center.
• Provided legal representation and medical support to a torture victim after ISIS chopped off his hand.
• Helped a mother and her 6-year old Iraqi child, who was born with a metabolic disorder that has left her unable to move or speak, resettle and receive care in the U.S.
• Helped a mother resettle in England with her family after militias in the country kidnapped and killed her six-year old child.
• Helped a 26-year old Iraqi mother of two children relocate to Australia after members of ISIL kidnapped and tortured her and her 2-year old son.
• Helped a transgendered person fleeing persecution in Iraq resettle in Germany.
• Assisted with appeals of rejected asylum claims of Syrians at risk of deportation to Turkey.
• Presented asylum law seminars to hundreds of refugees waiting for hearings.
• Assessed the claims of hundreds of unaccompanied minors and mapped unaccompanied minor populations.
• Drafted witness statements for minors seeking family reunification.
• Provided trainings on asylum law and family reunification to lawyers in Greece.
• Worked with UNHCR to identify protection solutions for vulnerable refugees.
• Drafted declarations and witness statements to support reports and litigation aimed at challenging the EU-Turkey deal, which puts Syrian refugees at risk of deportation to Turkey.

Recent Honors

For her innovative Middle East Refugee Protection work, Reed Smith received the "2018 Global Legal Award" for pro bono from American Lawyer. The Center for Victims of Torture also presented Jayne with its "2017 Eclipse Award" in recognition of her devotion to survivors of "torture, war crimes and persecution," and Reed Smith received the "2017 Human Rights Practitioner Award" from the National Immigrant Justice Center. In 2016, Reed Smith also received The American Lawyer's "Global Pro Bono Project of the Year" and it "Grand Prize for Global Citizenship." The Financial Times also named Jayne Fleming one of the Top Ten "Most Innovative Lawyers" in North America for 2016.

Patricia Fleming Foundation

In addition to her role at Reed Smith, Jayne is the founder of the Patricia Fleming Foundation, a nonprofit that supports refugees and internally displaced persons in the Middle East, Greece, and Haiti. Donations to the foundation cover food, shelter and medical costs for refugees and displaced persons who have been victims of torture, persecution, gender-based violence and other forms of harm. The Foundation has raised over $500,000 to support refugees since it was established in 2010.

Legal Victories

In Garcia-Martinez v. Ashcroft (2004), Jayne convinced the Ninth Circuit that the systematic rape of women during the Guatemalan civil war was not merely criminal conduct, but also a weapon of war used for political purposes. Given the political context, women survivors were entitled to assert asylum claims. Human rights experts hailed the court’s decision as an important victory for all women.

In January 2006, Jayne represented an Albanian teen who was held hostage for a month, subjected to daily rapes, and “prepared” for sex trafficking. The court said the attempted trafficking was a “personal” matter rather than a sociopolitical issue. After launching a national advocacy campaign supported by several human rights organizations, Jayne successfully mediated the case in the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

In April 2006, Jayne represented a Congolese woman imprisoned for six weeks and subjected to daily rapes. The Fifth Circuit had rejected her appeal on the ground that her torture was not politically motivated. Jayne filed a motion to reopen based on new evidence, and she launched an advocacy campaign with the help of several human rights organizations. This campaign led to thousands of letters reaching the desk of then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. Shortly thereafter, the government joined in Jayne’s motion, and the client ultimately received asylum.

In 2007, Jayne represented a Honduran woman who was subjected to child abuse and gang violence. Well aware that winning the case would be an uphill battle, Jayne flew to Honduras to meet with experts, wrote multiple briefs and declarations, and devoted hundreds of hours to witness interviews. The client was ultimately granted asylum on humanitarian grounds.

In 2009, Jayne won asylum for a 17-year-old girl from Guatemala who was persecuted because of her indigenous origin. She also achieved stipulated resolution in a case on behalf of a 16-year-old client from Guatemala who was subjected to extreme family violence and sexual abuse. In these cases and others, Jayne was able to provide the U.S. courts with essential evidence by flying in experts from on-the-ground relief agencies in other countries, such as the Center for Women’s Rights, which works directly with the most at-risk women and children in Honduras.

In 2010, Jayne won a significant asylum case in San Francisco Immigration Court on behalf of an 11 year-old girl, who had fled Honduras at the age of seven with her cousin, after their family had been targeted for death by gangs. These cases are traditionally hard to win, because of circuit court precedent that says that resistance to gang recruitment is not a basis for asylum.

In 2011, she won four more cases, gaining protection for a teenage boy from Honduras, who was subjected to extreme sexual exploitation; securing safety for an HIV-positive woman, who was subjected to extreme domestic violence and abuse; preventing the deportation of a woman from Liberia, who suffered domestic violence and abuse; and winning asylum for a gay man from Morocco, who feared prosecution for refusing to hide his sexual orientation.

In 2012, Jayne won asylum for a gay man from Guinea who was subjected to a public stoning after he rejected a forced marriage and came out about his homosexual status. She also won asylum for a domestic violence survivor from Honduras, and she achieved victories for two asylum seekers who suffered sexual violence in Haiti.

In 2013, Jayne maintained her winning streak by securing asylum victories for a torture survivor from Syria and another client from Haiti. She also successfully represented the mother of an HIV-positive asylum seeker who died in ICE detention, because he was wrongfully denied access to his medication and other adequate medical treatment. Jayne also obtained humanitarian parole for a young man gang-raped in 2011 in Haiti by UN peacekeepers from Uruguay, allowing him to re-settle in the United States and receive much-needed psychological care.

In 2014, Jayne rallied more than a hundred doctors, lawyers, aid workers, and government officials in three nations to help a young Honduran mother and her 2-year-old child obtain life-saving medical care after they’d been injured on the so-called “train of death” in Mexico.

By the end of 2014, Jayne’s Reed Smith Haiti team and its partners had evacuated 60 women and child victims of violence in Haiti to safety in the United States and Canada.

In January 2015, Jayne launched a new humanitarian protection project in the Middle East to identify refugees who have suffered persecution or torture, and relocate them to places where they may heal and restart their lives.

In 2016, Jayne and the Middle East team developed a project to serve refugees stranded on the Greek islands. Between May and September 2016, the firm coordinated a project to provide legal support to Syrian refugees at risk of deportation to Turkey. In September 2016, Jayne led the development of an ongoing torture victim rehabilitation program in Athens, Greece for refugees.