Darcy Gallego ’25 has been selected for the highly prestigious Skadden Fellowship, which will allow her to work on an innovative legal project that fills a crucial legal gap affecting unrepresented asylum seekers in New York City. The Skadden Fellowship brings together a select group of recent graduates chosen from across the country to work on ambitious legal projects and launch their public interest careers.
Gallego said she was “ecstatic” when she heard that she had been selected as a fellow. “It felt like a validation of all the hard work I had done, not only preparing the application, but the way that I had very intentionally tried to structure my law school experience to reflect what I was interested in doing. It really felt like a full circle moment for me in a lot of ways.”
As a Skadden Fellow, Gallego will be working with the New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG) to implement a project that will help unrepresented asylum seekers prepare for immigration court hearings. Gallego will host a series of workshops that provide guidance on how to present the strongest case possible before going in front of an immigration judge. She will also facilitate partnership with law firms and other law schools to organize volunteers to help asylum seekers practice their testimonies.
”As of now, there isn’t really an infrastructure at all to prepare people in such a tailored way,” said Gallego, who hopes the program will “fill that gap … understanding that folks may not have an attorney but that not being a reason for why people shouldn’t be as equipped as possible to put the strongest case forward before an immigration judge.”
Gallego, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Colombia, said that she’s always been interested in giving back to the immigrant community. Before enrolling at Fordham Law, she worked at the Immigration Hub in Washington, DC, an organization focused on advancing pro-immigrant policies on the federal level. After her 1L summer internship at Catholic Migration Services, where she had the opportunity to work directly with asylum seekers, she realized that this was an area of the law she wanted to pursue long term.
“From very early on I knew I wanted to build a career to support [the immigrant]community in some way but I think the law always felt really out of reach,” she said. “But when it came into focus—when I was fortunate to get into Fordham and could really visualize the law as a career for myself— it was never a question of what I wanted to do with it. I always knew it was going to be in the service of immigrants. I just didn’t know in what way exactly.”
Gallego said that the Fordham Law community was “instrumental” in helping her throughout the fellowship application process, including Fordham Law professors Jennifer Gordon and Russell Pearce, the Public Interest Resource Center, the Stein Scholars program, the Feerick Center for Social Justice, as well as former Skadden Fellow Anthony Damelio ’22.
Gordon, who advised Gallego even before she began her application, said that she was “thrilled—but not surprised” to learn that Darcy had been awarded a Skadden fellowship.
“When I met her as a 1L, I was so impressed by her depth of knowledge, experience, and commitment in the field of immigrants’ rights. She has built on that foundation over the past three years, equipping herself well for the essential work she will be doing with asylum seekers through her project. I couldn’t be more proud,” said Gordon.
After working to help immigrants navigate the legal system, Gallego said she’d like to one day return to immigration policy work or pursue impact litigation.
“I think that human element is always what keeps me going,” said Gallego. “[I have] a level of deep respect and recognition for all the sacrifices that every single immigrant goes through to be here that kind of just drives me in my work, because I’ve seen it up close growing up. So it’s very meaningful in that way, to be recognized for that vision and to have the opportunity to implement it.”