TRU Law Students take part in nationwide ‘research-a-thon’ for refugees banned from U.S

Feb 4, 2017 | 9:33 AM

KAMLOOPS — Thompson Rivers University is one of dozens of law schools across the country spent the weekend collecting information to go towards a legal challenge against U.S President Donald Trump’s refugee ban.

According to co-organizer Parvej Sidhu, at least 35 TRU law students took part in Saturday’s event.

Each campus was tasked with researching a specific area of law that will then be submitted to the Canadian Council of Refugees to challenge the Safe Third Country Agreement.

“When you think about the people who are affected by the ban, they’re very vulnerable,” said Sidhu. “They’re looking for a stable second chance at life and we believe that the law should provide that to them. We’re going to be working on a specific question all day in shifts and by the end of the day our goal is to have a memo in place that we’ll send off to the CCR.”

Trump recently signed an executive order banning refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States for three months.

In less than 24 hours, the ‘research-a-thon’ project grew from a sole initiative at the McGill Faculty of Law to all 22 Canadian law schools taking part.