Five Stein Scholars graduates—Janice Chua ’14, Annie Chen ’09, Sophia Goring-Piard ’00, Leena Khandwala ’04, and Andrew Wachtenheim ’10—reflect on their work as immigration attorneys, jobs that have become that much more complicated by the possibility of changes to policies and programs at the federal level.
Janice Chua ’14
Immigrant Justice Corps Fellow at Queens Legal Services
I am currently a third-year Immigrant Justice Corps fellow at Queens Legal Services. IJC is a fellowship program created to address the lack of quality representation for immigrants fighting deportation and seeking lawful status. As an IJC fellow, I focus on humanitarian immigration and provide direct representation for survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking, victims of serious crimes, and asylum seekers.
Last year, I visited Texas as part of the fellowship and represented Central American women and children who were detained at “Family Residential Centers.” Every day, we drove to the detention centers to meet with these women and children to prepare them for their interviews with asylum officers and immigration judge hearings. We listened to their traumatic experiences of domestic and gang violence in their home countries and the dangerous journeys they took to seek refuge in the United States. Even after they arrived in the U.S., they were detained in reprehensible living situations, including in facilities that were extremely cold, overcrowded, and lacking in adequate water, food, and medical care. At night, we drove to the local bus station where some women and children were dropped off, and we held impromptu know-your-rights trainings and mini-consultations for them at the bus stop. While many of them were incredibly relieved to be released from the detention centers, that relief was soon replaced by the anxiety of taking a 30-hour or so bus ride to another state with only the clothes they had on, not knowing English, and the uncertainty of what was ahead.
As I enter my third year as an immigration lawyer, I can attest that this field is frustrating, depressing, and infuriating. However, the most difficult parts have also been the fuel for my work every day. Listening to the horrific stories of my detained clients, domestic violence victims, or trafficking survivors has not caused me to burn out or lose faith in humanity; instead, I am continually reminded of my clients’ incredible resilience against adversities.
When I was in Texas, I worked with a young woman on her asylum case. She recounted how she was forced as a teenager to marry an abusive man who began to physically and sexually assault her and their child for years. During my interview with her, because of the lack of adequate space and childcare at the detention center, her 3-year-old son had to be in the room with us. He was bored and confused about why his mom was not holding or playing with him, so he started pulling and tugging at his mom’s shirt like any reasonable 3-year-old child. I offered him crayons, but he lost interest in coloring quickly. He started screaming for attention, which his mom could not give because she was struggling to open up to a complete stranger, me, about the most intimate and painful details of her life. The woman started crying, and the boy, seeing his mom’s tears, instantly stopped crying himself. He then went to sit next to her quietly and didn’t say another word for the rest of our meeting. Even though this child was scared, confused, and forced to be there, he loves his mom and was strong for her, much like how she was strong for him when she gathered the courage to leave her abusive partner and their home country that had failed to protect them. These memories of my clients’ strength in difficulties will continue to empower me to fight for them even in the face of new obstacles in the coming years.
Annie Chen ’09
Associate Program Director of the Unaccompanied Children Program at the Center on Immigration and Justice at Vera Institute for Justice
I work to increase access to counsel for immigrants facing deportation as the associate program director for the Unaccompanied Children Program at the Vera Institute of Justice. There is not yet a right to government funded counsel in immigration court—even children or immigrants with mental health disorders have to represent themselves. Our team works nationally to increase access to legal information and representation for unaccompanied children by setting up and managing legal services programs. We provide technical assistance to the programs, develop best practices, and work to expand services. We currently manage a network of 34 legal services providers who work directly with unaccompanied children in immigration detention and after release from custody.
There has been immense change and growth in the system involving unaccompanied children in the past few years. This has provided both challenges and opportunities by focusing attention on the scale of the plight facing these children. When I started in the program, the system saw about 10,000 children in the federal detention system a year. In two years, this number increased to 60,000 in 2014 and has remained high, with more children fleeing unsafe conditions and increased violence in Central America risking the journey to the U.S. and getting apprehended at the border with Mexico.
At Vera we seek innovative ways to improve justice systems, and I work to improve the immigration system by increasing access to counsel for unaccompanied children. Recently I worked on a pilot project designed to serve children who live in the Southeastern United States and face barriers to accessing legal services because they live far from the immigration courts. This pilot is a good example of how we work—in partnership with government and local stakeholders, and by combining data and research with innovative program design. We conducted an initial data and landscape analysis of several Immigration Court venues in the Southeastern United States to determine potential program locations. We then narrowed our focus on the Memphis court, which covers the geographical area of Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Children in this region often travel up to eight hours just to get to court. Then we set up the pilot program with a coalition of Memphis-based legal services organizations and community-based organizations located across Tennessee and Arkansas to identify qualifying children in their communities, provide travel assistance so the children can get to court, and of course, provide legal representation. As we run the pilot, we gather data to assess its progress and effectiveness, and to inform future programs.
Prior to Vera, I was a practicing attorney. Right after law school I was lucky enough to work at Legal Aid in the Immigration Law Unit defending detained immigrants in removal proceedings with support from the law firm that I had summered at. My clients were long-term green card holders who the government detained and sought to deport because of their criminal convictions. One of my first clients had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was living on the streets. He was originally from Mexico but had grown up in California and had had a green card since he was a child. When he was a teenager he moved to New York on his own. As his schizophrenia went untreated he ended up homeless and he lost contact with his family. When I met him in an immigration detention facility, the government was trying to deport him because of his five turnstile jumping convictions, and the law said he was not eligible for bond. He had to fight his case while in detention for over a year and we eventually helped him win his case. But for every case we took on, there were many other immigrants we could not represent. We could only conduct informal, know-your-rights presentations and legal screenings whenever we visited area detention centers. There was very little funding for this work, and a small community of people doing it. It’s been incredible to see how much the field has grown—now to the point where New York has the first public defender immigration defense system in the country, the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, which Vera helped pilot.
After Legal Aid, I was a litigator at a law firm. I gained valuable litigation skills and took every opportunity to work on immigration cases as a pro bono attorney. After a few years I looked for a chance to return to public interest work, and I jumped at the opportunity to work at Vera for immigrants facing deportation in need of counsel, but in a role different from direct services. My experiences in direct services and as a pro bono attorney inform the access to counsel work I do today. I work with legal services attorneys on the ground representing kids and with pro bono attorneys who are a critical part of providing representation to immigrants, especially when there is no right to appointed counsel in immigration court.
Like many of my friends and colleagues, the most recent presidential election has left a deep personal and professional impact. I feel very lucky to be at an organization and in a field where I am committed to the issues. A month after the election, I am energized to continue advocating for access to justice for immigrants. This work is now more important than ever.
Sophia Goring-Piard ’00
Of Counsel at Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, LLP
I am an immigration attorney, serving as Of Counsel in the New York office of the world’s largest immigration law firm, Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP. I first had an idea that I wanted to pursue a career in immigration law while attending college at Washington University in St. Louis, when I read daily reports on the Haitian refugee crisis in the early 90s. Haitians who were fleeing the island nation after the military coup were trying to seek refuge in the U.S. but were intercepted at sea and returned to Haiti to face persecution, while Cuban refugees arriving at the same time were allowed to reach the shores of the U.S. and claim protection. I was intrigued and troubled by the disparate treatment of the two distinct migrant populations. After college, I learned about business immigration when I worked for Fidelity Investments in Boston as an international human 
resources representative. My role involved interfacing with corporate immigration attorneys and tax professionals when Fidelity’s employees needed to travel outbound from or inbound to the U.S. on work assignments and business visits.
In law school as a Stein Scholar I spent my first summer working at Catholic Legal Immigration Network for the Archdiocese of New York, where I experienced my formal introduction to immigration law, regulations, and case law on detention, expedited removal, and asylum. I accompanied CLINIC attorneys to the detention center in Queens to screen detainees for possible asylum claims. From my combined experiences in the immigration space, I felt destined to work in this area as a career. It seemed as though immigration law would provide diversity of experience from both a social justice/humanitarian and business economics standpoint. By my second year in law school, I worked as a law clerk at Fragomen and later as a summer associate where I learned more about business immigration to help corporate clientele and small enterprises meet global talent needs through preparation of employment-based nonimmigrant and immigrant visa petitions, as well as participated in immigration-related pro bono opportunities for clients of non-profit organizations that partnered with the firm. Finally, by my third year in law school I served as a Thurgood Marshall Fellow at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York within the Immigrant Women and Children project, where I assisted immigrant women and children who were abused by their U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident spouses/parents and wanted to self-petition for lawful permanent residence status under provisions of the Violence Against Women Act. Essentially, immigration law has been part of my DNA and my passion for the field has never waned.
The results of the recent U.S. presidential election will probably be the biggest unexpected challenge that we will face as immigration practitioners for pro bono, fee-based individual, and corporate client matters. We anticipate that President-elect Trump’s immigration proposals will create unprecedented challenges to the process by which clients apply for non-immigrant and immigrant status and benefits, as current progressive immigration policy and programs that President Obama’s administration put forth may be repealed. Touting an “America-first” platform, the Trump administration may increase audits of U.S. employers that hire foreign workers on employment-based visas, implement stringent changes to U.S. visa and green card programs, focus heavily on deportation of undocumented individuals, renegotiate or withdraw the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement, and build a wall between our southern border and Mexico, to name a few. We at the firm are in the midst of counseling business and pro bono clients on the impact of possible restrictionist immigration policies that may become reality in the coming months, and how to effectively plan for those drastic changes.
I have had many successes during my work at Fragomen, and for a four-year period where I had a break from the firm and established my own immigration practice in Harlem. Throughout my career, I have represented amazing, innovative and prominent business executives, engineers, artists, and other highly talented foreign workers who contribute to the U.S. economy and our society. I have enjoyed assisting such individuals on their path to citizenship. I have also found great satisfaction in representing individuals in pro bono matters in petitions or applications for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, asylum, VAWA, U visas, and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, as well as in removal proceedings before the immigration courts. Earlier this year, I also participated in the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s annual National Day of Action, where hundreds of immigration lawyers nationwide assembled on Capitol Hill to meet with members of Congress and/or their staff to advocate for various immigration platforms, including comprehensive reform.
I would advise students or graduates who are thinking about pursuing a similar position to get as much practical hands-on, immigrant-advocacy, client-facing immigration experience as possible, whether through an Immigration Law Clinic or volunteer opportunities with non-profits that serve immigrant populations. I also highly recommend that they take an immigration course in law school to become familiar with the laws, regulations, and ever-changing administrative policies. It is critically important to seek opportunities to engage with foreign nationals to obtain an accurate sense of what immigration law practice entails, examine the facts of their cases, and determine a strategic path for assisting them in their goals under our immigration laws and regulations.
My day involves helping clients to manage their high-volume immigration programs, which can be quite intense. Each day is very busy with fielding client calls, responding to emails, supervising a team of attorneys and paralegals on case matters, advising clients on immigration compliance issues, and building solutions to emergency situations presented at the U.S. consulates abroad and U.S. ports of entry or through petition and application filings with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. I think that my pro bono work is a saving grace that provides me with a sense of balance and reprieve from the day-to-day work, and a different sense of purpose. Last year, my firm instituted an annual 50-hour pro bono requirement for all attorneys. I have always had a commitment to pro bono due to my Stein background, so this was not a challenge for me. The new requirement encourages me to help those in need on various types of immigration-related matters such as screenings for unaccompanied minors at the Immigration Court, completing green card applications for U-visa beneficiaries, participating in and coordinating naturalization application clinics, volunteering at general immigration clinics, and assisting with DACA applications. Due to the crisis of underrepresented immigrants we are facing, the opportunities are abundant to provide quality representation to those in need. I also currently serve as co-chair of the American Immigration Lawyers Association NY Chapter’s Citizenship Day committee and co-chair of the NYSBA Commercial and Federal Litigation Section’s Immigration Litigation Committee. All of these “extracurricular” activities keep me informed and engaged in the field of immigration. They also present new opportunities and platforms for me to share my knowledge and expertise, and to grow from hearing about others’ experiences.
Leena Khandwala ’04
Staff Attorney, New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, Brooklyn Defender Services
I arrived in New York from Pakistan in 1999 with a fiancé visa and applied for a green card based on my marriage to my U.S. citizen spouse. My struggle to understand the complex legal process involved in the path to permanent residence and ultimately citizenship whetted my appetite for immigration law. Knowing early on what I wanted to pursue after law school enabled me to hone in on opportunities and courses, such as Immigration Law, the Immigrant Rights Clinic, and an internship with Sanctuary for Families, that helped launch my career.
Upon graduating from law school, I received a fellowship from New Voices – a Ford-funded national leadership development program – to work at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at U.C. Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. My project was aimed at advancing the development of asylum law in the U.S. by identifying and litigating several cases raising novel issues, including representing parents seeking to protect their daughter, a U.S. citizen, from genital cutting in their home country; filing a successful petition for rehearing en banc before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals; and initiating cases aimed at broadening the scope of protection for gender-based harms such as forced marriage and trafficking. I was also involved in advocacy around critiquing the REAL ID Act, and bringing attention to the ongoing killings of women and girls in Guatemala with the goal of addressing the root causes of refugee flows and pressuring the U.S. and Guatemalan governments to rectify the conditions that allow violence with impunity to continue. I had an amazing mentor and my advocacy skills grew exponentially during this time. However, even though I enjoyed doing impact litigation and national policy advocacy work, I wanted to expand my direct representation skills and missed having direct client contact.
Three years later, my husband and I decided to return to the East coast, and I joined the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic and the Civil Litigation Clinic at Seton Hall University School of Law as a Clinical Teaching Fellow. I worked with law students on a variety of immigration and human rights cases, including asylum applications, Convention Against Torture claims, and visas for victims of trafficking and other serious crimes. I also engaged in advocacy around medical repatriations, or the practice by U.S. hospitals to deport injured or sick immigrants to a different medical facility in their home country without their consent. In the Civil Litigation Clinic, I worked on cases involving consumer fraud, predatory and subprime lending, and mortgage foreclosure. At Seton Hall, I developed experience in direct representation while also mentoring and working with law students.
On completing my fellowship at Seton Hall, I wanted to broaden my experience in immigration law. I had received one too many requests for immigration advice that I was unable to adequately handle at the time because my immigration experience was focused largely on humanitarian forms of protection. So I joined the office of Claudia Slovinsky and Associates, PLLC, a boutique style immigration practice known for solving complex problems and taking on tough cases. There I handled complicated family-based as well as employment cases, applications for naturalization, and removal defense. I also built valuable client management skills and had the opportunity to work with a mentor who was well regarded in the immigration field as being a highly creative and skillful advocate.
This year I decided it was time to pivot back to the non-profit world. I am presently a staff attorney with Brooklyn Defender Services’ (BDS) New York Immigrant Families Unity Project, a cutting edge program that provides free, high quality legal representation for indigent immigrant clients who are detained and at risk of permanent exile from their families and communities. It is akin to a public defender model for detained immigrants. My job is incredibly challenging and quick paced, as it involves working with a highly varied client base, from recent arrivals to the U.S. to long term residents who often have serious criminal and mental health complications. However, it is also highly rewarding, for the same reasons. The legal and political landscape for immigrants in general and my clients in particular has been tough and unforgiving and can only be expected to get worse. My substantive experience and background has equipped me to devise creative solutions for my clients and has also developed the steely mettle necessary to be a strong advocate for them.
My career in immigration law has been varied. But each new opportunity has honed my expertise in an area of law I feel deeply passionate about. My advice to students interested in exploring this field: There are a multitude of different opportunities, in direct representation, impact litigation, and policy advocacy, so don’t be afraid to explore different areas and experiences. As long as you are committed to and assertive about getting the best experience possible from your workplace, have confidence in yourself and your abilities, develop management and leadership skills, and find good mentors while also becoming a mentor to others, you will continue to thrive and grow.
Andrew Wachtenheim ’10
Litigation Staff Attorney, Immigrant Defense Project
I am a staff attorney at the Immigrant Defense Project, where I focus on impact litigation in the federal courts on behalf of immigrants who are targeted for enforcement because of contact with the criminal justice system. The communities my office advocates for are green card holders, asylees and refugees, undocumented people, workers, and families, all impacted by the tightening and unforgiving nexus between the immigration and criminal laws of the United States.
I started working in the immigrants’ rights movement as legal support staff 12 years ago without a fully formed understanding of the complexities and shocking restrictions of the immigration laws. I first learned about the immigration consequences of criminal convictions by working on the deportation defense teams of two longtime green card holders: a young man from Ireland who the government sought to deport because he’d sold 
marijuana as a college student, and a Gulf War veteran suffering from severe PTSD and related drug addiction against whom the government sought mandatory deportation for a gun-related offense. Through these cases, I started to learn about the criminalization of immigrants, the sprawling immigration detention system the United States has built in the last 20 years, and the callousness with which the immigration laws embed additional penalties in a criminal justice system that itself is broken by issues of race and class.
I spent my first law school summer working with immigrants detained in South Texas and in deportation proceedings because of criminal convictions. When I graduated from law school, I worked for four years in the immigration practice of a public defender office representing immigrants in deportation proceedings and advising immigrants and public defenders about the immigration consequences of contact with the criminal justice system. I continue this work at IDP, pushing for law reform and the restoration of due process to immigrants through federal litigation. In addition to our impact litigation work, my office runs a series of helplines for immigrants and their attorneys and family members, engages in strategic communications and legislative advocacy, provides individual support to litigants in immigration and criminal proceedings, and conducts know-your-rights presentations in collaboration with grassroots movements.
For law students and graduates considering joining the movement to protect immigrants’ rights, the need has perhaps never been greater. I encourage you to do this work, and to recognize and embrace its intersectionality with other social justice movements. I encourage you to consider the rights of all immigrants—green card holders, undocumented workers, people who have children and people who don’t, people who are married and people who are not, survivors of domestic violence, people who have been incarcerated—and to pursue a system premised on equality rather than stratification, and unity rather than division. The new administration is one that hates immigrants and will work to purge immigrants who live here and to bar would-be immigrants from coming here to join their families, find refuge, or pursue different lives for themselves. I hope you will consider standing up for these communities and resisting the spread of criminalization and vilification this new administration has encouraged. If you do, make sure you take care of yourself as well. Be mindful of your physical and emotional health. Find an office that respects and values you as much as it respects and values the clients and issues for which you are fighting. Think about who you are, what you love, and what you are good at, and bring that together with your desire to fight for social justice. You will find the right issue, the right campaign, and the right organization or office through which to do your best work in the world.