About Me

I am passionate about defending non-citizens who are facing deportation or seeking refugee protection, and assisting immigrants with past criminal convictions remain together with their families in the United States. For my work, I was selected as a 2008 Northern California Super Lawyer by Law and Politics Magazine.

Before starting up my own private practice, I was Legal Services Manager with the U.S. refugee program in Vienna, Austria, where I brought immigrants to safety and reunited them with family in the United States. I also served in Central Asia as a migration and refugee advisor to the United Nations, and as an attorney overseeing pro bono legal representation for the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights in New York. Back East, I was adjunct clinical professor at New York Law School's Human Right Clinic. Coming out of law school, I worked as litigation counsel with the Immigration & Naturalization Service, in the U.S. Justice Department's Honors Program.

I am a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law and UCLA (magna cum laude). I am immediate past chair of the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and was past Chair of the Immigration Section of the Santa Clara County Bar Association. I am a member on the Legal Adisory Board of the Stanford Law School Immigrants Rights Clinic, and an asylum law mentor for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco. I also organize pro bono events in San Jose and throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. I am fluent in Spanish and French.

If you'd like to find out more about me, please visit my website at: http://www.immigration-defense.com/

Specialties:

immigration litigation, criminal immigration issues, deportation defense, naturalization, immigration fraud cases, refugee and asylum, family immigration, consular processing, fiance visas, immigration appeals and motions to reopen; responses to request for evidence (RFEs)