About the Defending Vulnerable Populations Program

When President Trump took office, CLINIC responded to the growing demand for removal defense services by establishing the Defending Vulnerable Populations (DVP) Project within its Training and Legal Support Program. DVP began building a corps of immigrant defenders by training new attorneys and accredited representatives to take on these increasingly complex cases. As the need for training and legal support on issues affecting vulnerable populations grew, CLINIC launched DVP as a standalone program, in March 2019, to focus on removal defense, asylum, special immigrant juvenile status (SIJS), immigration consequences of criminal convictions or conduct, appeals to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) and the U.S. courts of appeals, federal litigation, and remote response models.

DVP seeks to:

• Provide immigrant defenders removal defense, asylum, SIJS, and criminal consequences training and legal support;
• Challenge anti-immigrant policies and regulations through federal litigation, with CLINIC serving as counsel, organizational plaintiff, or in an amicus capacity
• Launch remote models, such as the Bond Project, Motions to Reopen Project, and the Formerly Separated Families Project, in response to immigration enforcement; and
• Raise public awareness of the human toll on those affected by anti-immigrant changes as well as the contributions immigrants make to our society.

Acknowledgments

CLINIC’s Defending Vulnerable Populations Program authored this 6th edition of Representing Clients in Immigration Court. The authors of this resource are as follows:

Michelle N. Méndez, DVP Director. As DVP Director, Michelle provides training and technical support to immigration practitioners nationwide, engages in federal litigation, and supervises the remote response projects. Prior to joining CLINIC, Michelle served as senior managing attorney at Catholic Charities D.C., where she began as an Equal Justice Works Fellow. Michelle has taught the Immigration Litigation Clinic at Catholic University Columbus School of Law, served as a Visiting Clinical Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School, and assisted the Immigrant Rights Clinic at the University of Baltimore School of Law. Michelle serves as the Program Director for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy’s (NITA) Immigration Public Programs, and, in 2019, NITA awarded her the Robert E. Oliphant Award for Outstanding Service. In 2015, AILA awarded her the Joseph Minsky Young Lawyer Award in part because of her leadership on Maryland’s post-18 SIJS law. Michelle is an immigrant, originally from Medellín, Colombia.

Ann Garcia, DVP Attorney. Ann’s work focuses on assisting families separated by the Trump administration, which includes finding counsel for hundreds of separated families, filing administrative claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act, locating and returning separated parents to the United States, and informing the work of the Task Force on the Reunification of Families. Prior to this role, Ann led DVP’s Remote Bond Project. Ann came to CLINIC from RAICES where she was an Equal Justice Works Fellow. Her work at RAICES focused on removal defense of vulnerable detained individuals. Ann holds a J.D. from American University Washington College of Law. Before law school, Ann was an immigration policy analyst with the Center for American Progress.

Bradley Jenkins, DVP Federal Litigation Attorney. Bradley leads CLINIC’s federal litigation team, which has provided representation in many significant cases to preserve the rights of asylum seekers and other vulnerable immigrants: including Matter of L-E-A, SAP v. Barr, LMM v. Cuccinelli, and CARECEN v. Cuccinelli. In addition to litigation, Bradley contributes to CLINIC’s manuals, practice advisories, and trainings—principally on the subjects of removal defense, immigration consequences of criminal convictions, appellate procedure, and trial advocacy. Prior to this position, Bradley managed the BIA Pro Bono Project, and during his tenure, approximately 200 immigrants secured relief from removal. Bradley graduated, cum laude, from Harvard Law School.

Katherine (“Katy”) Lewis, DVP Consulting Attorney. From 2011­–2018, Katy was part of the Van Der Hout LLP team, and from 2007–2011, Katy worked for the Law Offices of Robert B. Jobe. At these two prominent San Francisco-based immigration law firms, Katy represented immigrants in a wide array of immigration matters before U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the U.S. Department of State, immigration courts, the BIA, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, as well as in federal district courts. From 2006–2007, Katy served as an Attorney Advisor at the Los Angeles Immigration Court as part of the Department of Justice Executive Office for Immigration Review Honors Program. Katy holds a J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law.

Aimee Mayer-Salins, DVP Attorney. At CLINIC, Aimee leads the Remote Motions to Reopen Project. Aimee came to CLINIC from Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP, where she represented clients in a wide array of immigration matters and helped coordinate the Boston office’s pro bono efforts. Prior to joining Fragomen, Aimee practiced removal defense and family-based immigration law at a law firm in Boston. She also completed a fellowship with Boston College’s Post-Deportation Human Rights Project where she represented immigrants seeking to return to the United States after deportation. Before her fellowship, she served as a judicial law clerk at the BIA. Aimee earned her J.D. from American University, Washington College of Law.

Rachel Naggar, BIA Pro Bono Project Attorney. Through the BIA Pro Bono Project, Rachel mentors pro bono attorneys representing vulnerable immigrants before the Board of Immigration Appeals. Prior to joining CLINIC, Rachel worked as a staff attorney at the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project in Arizona and Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem in the Immigration Defense Practice. Rachel received her J.D. from Boston College Law School. During law school, she was a summer clinical fellow at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau.

Victoria (“Vickie”) Neilson, DVP Managing Attorney. Vickie provides training and technical support to immigration practitioners nationwide, with a focus on asylum issues, and is also part of CLINIC’s federal litigation team. Vickie is the former legal director of Immigrant Justice Corps and Immigration Equality where her practice focused on the intersection of LGBT issues and immigration law. Vickie has also worked for the Office of Chief Counsel at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services at the New York Asylum Office and is the former legal director of the HIV Law Project. She has taught as an adjunct professor at City University of New York School of Law and at New York University School of Law. She is the co-chair of AILA’s national Asylum Committee and former chair of the Immigration and Nationality Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association. She is a graduate of CUNY School of Law.

Rebecca Scholtz, DVP Senior Attorney. Rebecca provides training and technical support to immigration practitioners nationwide with a focus on issues related to SIJS and unaccompanied children in removal proceedings. She is also part of CLINIC’s federal litigation team. Prior to joining CLINIC, Rebecca worked with Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid's Immigration Law Project, represented unaccompanied children, and provided training, technical assistance, pro bono program development, and advocacy on children’s immigration issues. Rebecca received her J.D. from Yale Law School and served as a judicial clerk for the Hon. Diana Murphy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Prior to law school, she served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica.

Denise Noonan Slavin, DVP Consulting Attorney. Denise is a retired Immigration Judge and President Emerita of the National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ). Denise served almost 25 years as an Immigration Judge at the Baltimore and Miami Immigration Courts and the Krome Detention Center. Prior to her tenure as an Immigration Judge, she served as a prosecutor in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice and at legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service. She is an adjunct professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and has worked for CLINIC as a consultant since April 2019. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland School of Law.

Tanika Vigil, DVP Consulting Attorney. Since 2019, Tanika has assisted DVP on the Remote Bond Project, trial advocacy trainings, and has written resources and webinars on immigration consequences of criminal convictions. Tanika has represented immigrants in Massachusetts, New York, Texas, and Colorado and is a proud member of the inaugural fellowship class of the Immigrant Justice Corps. Tanika completed a clerkship with Justice Gabriel at the Colorado Supreme Court in 2017. She graduated, cum laude, from Harvard Law School.

Thank you to DVP Fellow Elizabeth Crivaro, undergraduate intern Sabrina Slagowitz (University of Chicago), and DVP Legal Assistant Amari Verastegui for their invaluable review and support on the appendices.

Our sincere gratitude to our interns for their careful editing and cite checking: Rachel Calanni (University of Maryland King Carey School of Law), Grant Chamness (Harvard Law School), Katie Hyde (University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School), and Abigail Nyberg (New York University School of Law). We could not have met AILA’s deadline without you.