Representing those seeking protection — and building the evidence base that the system requires.
From first interview through Torture Claims Appeal Board appeals, judicial review, detention proceedings, and related healthcare and welfare matters.
Hong Kong's Unified Screening Mechanism (USM) is the system by which claims for non-refoulement protection are assessed — whether an individual would face torture, cruel or inhuman treatment, persecution, or arbitrary deprivation of life if returned to their home country. The USM sits at the intersection of Hong Kong's immigration, human rights, and administrative law.
The clinic's work in this area runs on parallel tracks. We provide direct legal representation to non-refoulement claimants through every stage of the system. Alongside that casework, our students conduct empirical research on the system itself — the cost and conditions of detention, the practical obstacles to healthcare access, the patterns in published TCAB decisions, and the gap between Hong Kong's stated policy commitments and the lived experience of claimants.
The two tracks are not separate. The cases inform the research, and the research informs the cases.
A non-refoulement claim moves through several decision points before it is resolved. Representation matters at each. The diagram below traces the path.
The clinic's engagement with the USM is not a single service. Students work across a spectrum of matters — from drafting interview preparation notes to analysing appellate decisions to tracking the fiscal expansion of the detention estate.
Students assist practising lawyers with the preparatory work that runs across the entire claim — researching country-of-origin conditions, coordinating interpretation, and helping claimants understand what each stage of the process will involve. Claimants tell their own account; our role is to ensure they can do so with the support and information they need.
When a claim is rejected at first instance, students help draft appeal submissions to the Torture Claims Appeal Board, analysing the reasoning of the rejection and identifying grounds of challenge.
For cases that proceed beyond the TCAB, students work on applications for judicial review at the High Court — preparing grounds, bundling evidence, and contributing to written submissions.
The clinic represents individuals held in immigration detention, both in challenges to the lawfulness of detention and in claims for damages where detention has been found unlawful.
We support claimants navigating access to public healthcare, welfare services, and family reunification — including dependant visa issues and cross-border family matters.
Across all of the above, our students contribute to research that informs policy — quantitative analysis of detention costs, frontline-interview studies of access, systematic reviews of published decisions.
We recognise that some claimants do not have strong cases and may be better served by returning to their home country. Where our professional assessment is that a claim is unlikely to succeed, we say so — and we help the client understand why, and think through the alternatives, including voluntary return. Representation is not the same as advocacy at all costs.
"We go where the evidence leads. Not where the conclusion is comfortable."
Three ongoing research projects from this practice area. Each pairs legal analysis with empirical method — and each is designed to be useful to the lawyers, policy-makers, and NGO partners who work on these issues day-to-day.
Tracking the expanding economy of Hong Kong's immigration detention estate — drawing on Security Bureau Finance Committee papers, Immigration Department responses to Access to Information requests, and the public budget. The daily cost per detainee at Castle Peak Bay rose 149% between 2016–17 and 2022–23.
Read the data analysis →Frontline interviews paired with doctrinal analysis. The finding: non-refoulement claimants have the same entitlements to public healthcare as local residents, but language, discrimination, fear, and lack of understanding can leave that formal entitlement unrealised in practice.
Publication forthcomingA systematic review of the more than 3,400 Torture Claims Appeal Board decisions published by the Judiciary since February 2025 as attachments to judicial review decisions. Students audited what publication exposes about claimants; the clinic is reviewing the full corpus. Early patterns in dismissal reasoning, and the comparative case for anonymised publication.
Read the showcase →A study of deaths among non-refoulement claimants in Hong Kong — drawing on publicly available records and fieldwork — documents mortality rates and the conditions in which deaths occurred. The findings raise questions about the adequacy of the care and support available to claimants throughout the process, and about how deaths in this population are recorded and responded to by public authorities.
Publication forthcomingThe clinic's USM work is made possible by the NGOs, charities, and frontline organisations that refer clients, share expertise, and support claimants through the parts of the process that go beyond a lawyer's remit.