2024 AILA Chapter Pro Bono Champions
Congratulations to the 2024 AILA Chapter Pro Bono Champions! The 2024 Champions demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to providing pro bono assistance through various worthy initiatives. Thank you for promoting justice and advocating for underserved members of the immigrant population!
Arizona
Judy Flanagan
Judy grew up on a vineyard in Napa, California. After law school, she clerked for Chief Justice William A. Holohan of the Arizona Supreme Court and was a prosecutor for the City of Phoenix. She also worked as a staff attorney with the Urban Indian Law Office of Community Legal Services in Phoenix; a managing attorney for the Douglas office of Southern Arizona Legal Aid (SALA); and a hearing officer with the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections in Phoenix. While at SALA, she led a drive to establish the first domestic violence shelter in Douglas (initially housed in a former drug tunnel building). Judy most recently practiced immigration law in Phoenix as a sole practitioner for 22 years. She now works for the Florence Project as a Pro Bono Mentor for the Children’s Program, which provides high quality, innovative, and trauma-informed free legal education and representation to unaccompanied immigrant children in Arizona.
Carolinas
Garfinkel Immigration
Garfinkel Immigration attorneys have handled at least eight adjustment of status cases for U visa status holders in 2023. They served these low-income clients through an estimated 55 hours of pro bono service in 2023. Their work has supported low-income clients in becoming lawful permanent residents. Given that they are pro bono referrals from Legal Aid of North Carolina's Immigration Pathways for Victims (IMMPAV), these clients are survivors of domestic violence or sexual assault. Garfinkel Immigration had multiple attorneys involved in this pro bono project, and in turn, their pro bono hours of service allowed Legal Aid of North Carolina to assist even more survivors. The firm continues to serve these clients post-filing into 2024 while they await a response from USCIS. They met the need with a thoughtful, thorough approach. This pro bono project included a firm-wide emphasis on taking a pro bono U adjustment of status case. Some cases included multiple derivative family members and so the impact of the pro bono service truly impacted entirely families, bringing them closer to permanent residency and all the benefits this permanent immigration status bestows. Garfinkel ensured its team of attorneys and paralegals felt supported in this endeavor through an initial lunch and learn training led by LANC Attorney Anna Cushman and Garfinkel Attorney Cat Magennis in May of 2023. That Garfinkel Immigration Law would implement such a pro bono service model to benefit so many is worthy of recognition by AILA Carolinas Chapter. Their example of dedicated service may yet spur others to consider a similar pro bono project with Legal Aid of North Carolina's IMMPAV clients.
Chicago
Jacob Briskman
Jacob Briskman is a champion of immigrants’ rights, particularly immigrants in detention and those with criminal issues. He is the current co-chair of the Legal Services for Detainees Committee of the Chicago Chapter, volunteering countless hours coordinating the Bond Project. He and the committee conduct regular trainings for new attorneys and non-immigration attorneys alike to give them the tools to take on bond cases and work to ensure that the committee assigns as many pro bono detained defendants as possible. Furthermore, he always makes time to mentor newer and older practitioners alike in handling their own criminal immigration questions for their clients, and he does so with unmatched enthusiasm and energy. Jacob started as a criminal defense attorney for the firm Neil Kauffman & Associates in 2009 and then joined the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) in 2010. Starting his own firm in 2012, Jacob focuses on the intersection of immigration and criminal law and represents non-citizens in state and federal court, as well as before the different immigration agencies.
Colorado
Nicholas C. Pierce
Nicholas C. Pierce is a solo practitioner at Amistad Law, LLC, located in Denver, Colorado. Nicholas began his legal career as a public defender, and after working with Al Otro Lado’s Border Project in Tijuana, Mexico, he took his first asylum case, and eventually transitioned from public defender to humanitarian immigration and crimmigration attorney. Over the past two years, Nicholas has worked closely to support Afghan humanitarian parolees resettled in Colorado, volunteering at workshops, and taking numerous pro bono cases. Nicholas is generous with his time and expertise. He regularly offers resources and insight to his Colorado Chapter colleagues regarding tricky issues, particularly those impacting people from the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia. Nick co-chairs the Colorado Chapter’s Access to Services committee and has played an instrumental role in coordinating AILA’s pro bono and low bono efforts in Colorado. He is a tenacious and outstanding advocate and colleague.
Connecticut
Jennifer Antognini-O’Neill
Last year, Jennifer established a nonprofit organization called Caritas Immigration Legal Services, dedicated to providing compassionate and skilled legal assistance to the immigrant community, with a focus on serving women and children. Jennifer has worked tirelessly to launch Caritas and begin serving the community, both by accepting individual clients for representation and by providing community presentations to educate the public about the complex immigration system. Jennifer has also built an extensive network of community service providers in Middletown, where Caritas is located, so that she can connect clients to additional services and support. The chapter is so incredibly proud of Jennifer and grateful that she is a part of the Connecticut AILA family.
Hawaii
Kevin Block
Kevin Block is a Maui-based immigration attorney who has been in practice for ten years and is a long-time Maui resident. His small firm, founded in 2014, employs another attorney and a paralegal and handles family-based immigration, DACA, asylum (including the largest number of unaccompanied minor cases in the state), removal defense, appeals, VAWA and U visas, and naturalizations. He currently serves on the board of The Legal Clinic, providing no cost representation in immigration cases statewide, the advisory committee of the Refugee and Immigration Law Clinic at the University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law, the ACLU Hawaii Affiliate, the Maui Economic Recovery Commission, and is a founding attorney at Roots Reborn Lahaina. Mr. Block’s own home was nearly destroyed by the August 8, 2023, wildfires which devastated Maui and were the deadliest in US history. It was immediately apparent that Maui’s significant immigrant population (30% of those displaced by the Lahaina fire) would be severely impacted and recent experience from the COVID pandemic meant that they would not seek resources or relief because of fear and other obstacles. In the immediate aftermath, Mr. Block helped organize consular visits to provide document replacement and offered the services of his firm pro bono. In the coming months he and his team did outreach at the “hubs” which were set up in the beach parks north of Lahaina to provide services and resources to those displaced. He was at the Disaster Recovery Centers and other public outreach events, providing direct services and counsel and advice to the relief agencies. He and a group of dedicated advocates stood up an organization called “Roots Reborn Lahaina,” which has emerged as a leader in addressing gaps in service and become a hub for information and resources directed towards the Lahaina immigrant community. Roots Reborn has done intakes and assessments of 700 families, assisted with benefits applications, translation and interpretation, and legislative advocacy. In October of 2023, Mr. Block’s efforts came to the attention of the Hawaii Justice Foundation, which manages the state’s IOLTA account fund, and he was honored by Chief Justice Recktenwald with the “Distinguished Service Award.” Mr. Block is quick to point out that credit for the response and the pro bono work must be shared widely. Almost immediately, the world rushed to offer help to Maui and the Hawaii immigrant bar, legal community and AILA community flooded Maui with offers of help.
Idaho
Nicole R. Derden
Nicole R. Derden started a non-profit, Project Laura (with zero government support). Project Laura was created to help the Latin American unaccompanied minors and refugee assistance with representation in the courtroom, including primarily women and children who needed tremendous help. In addition, besides being a busy mom, wife, and woman business owner, she separates time to participate in almost all the pro bono activities in the community.
Chris C. Christensen
Chris C. Christensen has provided free services in the community since he joined the Idaho bar, especially when the Afghanistan community needed him most. He participates in almost every volunteer event and gives his time, skills, and guidance to other attorneys, law students, and non-profits.
Indiana
Allison Upchurch
Allison Upchurch, who became a practicing attorney in 2020, is an associate at the Indianapolis-based law firm of Lewis Kappes and focuses her practice on immigration law and litigation. Allison served as co-coordinator of the Indiana chapter's AIC Creative Writing Contest in 2022 and 2023. In that capacity, she solicited and judged entries and obtained prizes for the local winners. She has participated in Indiana chapter's AILA Citizenship Day event every year since 2019, and in recent years she has assumed the critical role of N-400 form reviewer to assist and volunteer attorneys completing forms for naturalization applicants. Allison's other pro bono involvement has included participating in pro bono legal clinics through the Indiana State Bar Association, IndyBar, Exodus, and the Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic, and serving as a judge for various moot court and mock trial competitions.
Michigan
Farah Al-khersan
Farah is an outstanding attorney devoted to not only accepting challenging cases, but also cases that would commit her to walk alongside her clients for many years navigating immigration court and/or humanitarian pathways to legal permanent residency. Her peers describe her as a passionate, tireless, modest, hardworking advocate who has always shown a deep commitment to pro bono and low bono work. Farah understands not just the legal issues with immigrant populations, but their vulnerabilities and practical challenges as well. This has motivated her over her almost 10-year career in immigration law to provide her time and resources to clients who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford her services. She is no stranger to assisting juvenile clients as well as clients who are abused or otherwise subjected to unstable social and political situations. Recently, she assisted Palestinian clients with applying for Advance Parole for individuals stuck in Gaza amid the violence. She has committed her time to speak with immigrants, including most recently at the Congolese Women of Michigan event in Ann Arbor. Farah also commits time to helping Special Immigrant Juvenile Status clients, unaccompanied minors in removal proceedings, and survivors of domestic violence. In the past year, Farah won asylum for a pro bono client she had been working with for six years. She works tirelessly to help the most vulnerable of immigration law clientele and is an inspiration to all.
Minnesota-Dakotas
Maria Miller
Maria Miller has dedicated her broad and deep expertise in immigration law to providing pro bono representation for so many families as a pro bono attorney with Mid MN Legal Aid. In just one recent example, she took on an entire family’s SIJS cases, and assisted them from start to finish, including obtaining guardianship orders in state court, filing applications with USCIS, and even stands prepared to assist other family members in securing a more stable immigration status. Mid MN Legal Aid’s clients are very happy to benefit from Maria’s compassionate and excellent representation. Mid MN Legal Aid has received many happy reviews from Maria’s pro bono clients. Mid MN Legal Aid and the Minnesota Dakotas Chapter thanks Maria for volunteering her time to ensure that her pro bono clients have access to justice, despite facing many barriers in accessing justice within the immigration system.
Missouri-Kansas
Michael Hilleary
Michael Hilleary practices law at Kansas Legal Services, the Legal Services Corporation in Kansas that provides legal assistance to persons with low income and victims of domestic violence. Although he is a new member to the Missouri-Kansas chapter, he has been assisting immigrants in different ways throughout the years. He was one of the people that implemented the help desk in Kansas which has been modeled throughout the state. This provides free legal guidance for pro se individuals throughout the courts of Kansas. He also represents individuals without legal status in divorce cases if they are victims of domestic abuse or crimes. When he represents nondocumented youth in the foster system, he ensures there are SIJS findings included in the orders. This year, he was the attorney that, following a grant from the Kansas Office of Refugee Resettlement, was appointed to represent the influx of Afghan war refugees and former soldiers. Michael Hilleary and project director Vanessa Watson have assisted 45 Afghans seeking asylum and the right to work in the United States since the project started in September 2023.
New England
Leslie Ditrani, Pathway for Immigrant Workers
Leslie Ditrani has had a long and successful career as a business immigration attorney. In 2022, she left private practice to found Pathway for Immigrant Workers, which provides pro bono services to local employers who would not otherwise have the means to sponsor their employees for green cards. Over the last two years, Leslie has built connections with many area legal aid organizations, becoming the go-to resource for a group of attorneys traditionally more well-versed in family- and humanitarian-based immigration. She also volunteered an immense amount of time to Massachusetts's surge clinics, spending weeks helping new arrivals apply for work permits.
Coalition of Organizations Supporting New Arrivals
Over the past year, Massachusetts has seen a massive increase in new immigrants arriving in the state. The increase has overwhelmed the state's social safety net, leading the governor to declare a state of emergency in August 2023. In response, social and legal service providers throughout the state mobilized, coordinating shelter services, organizing working groups, assisting with work permit and other immigration applications, providing employment and ESOL resources, and supporting families in their basic needs. These groups have represented the best of the state, ensuring that new neighbors are welcome.
New Jersey
Barbara Camacho
Barbara Camacho is the Director and Pro Bono Counsel at Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, LLP, and a Pro Bono Committee Co-Chair for the AILA New Jersey chapter. As Director and Pro Bono Counsel, Barbara is responsible for managing the firm’s pro bono initiatives throughout the United States. She has overall responsibility for coordinating and mentoring Fragomen attorneys in the United States in their pro bono representation of clients in removal proceedings, asylum, and applications for a variety of available immigration benefits. She is also responsible for developing and providing training to volunteer attorneys, supervising and litigating pro bono cases, and acting as the firm’s liaison to various non-profit legal service providers with which the firm partners. Barbara is a frequent panelist on a variety of immigration issues, including removal defense and children’s immigration issues before bar associations, community groups, and child protective agency personnel. She’s led trainings for law firms, nonprofit community organizations, the Practising Law Institute (PLI), and Lawline. Barbara led the Chapter’s first re-parole clinic serving Afghans. She has also responded to the migrant crisis by sponsoring an asylum application clinic in collaboration with American Friends Service Committee. She has also presented a Know Your Rights presentation in collaboration with a local nonprofit. She is currently collaborating with local providers in a working group exploring the viability of a Friend of the Court program at EOIR.
Jessica Chicas
Jessica Chicas is a licensed attorney in the state of New Jersey, a licensed clinical social worker in the states of New Jersey and Texas, and a co-chair of the AILA New Jersey chapter’s Pro Bono Committee. Jessica has the distinct ability to empathize with immigrants and understand the complexities they face in the US as she is the daughter of two immigrant parents from El Salvador. She has participated in various pro bono committee events, including community Q&A speaking engagements and asylum clinics in New Jersey. As a licensed clinical social worker, Jessica also provides some pro bono psychological evaluations to individuals applying for asylum, cancellation of removal, removal, VAWA, U visas, and T visas through her own counseling agency, Chicas Counseling Services, LLC. Jessica led the chapter’s first re-parole clinic serving Afghans. She has also responded to the migrant crisis by sponsoring an asylum application clinic in collaboration with American Friends Service Committee. She has also presented a Know Your Rights presentation in collaboration with a local nonprofit. She is currently collaborating with local providers in a working group exploring the viability of a Friend of the Court program at EOIR.
Northern California
Katie Kavanagh
Katie leads legal clinics and emergency legal services for the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, where she also provides pro se legal assistance to unrepresented detained individuals, helps match people with pro bono attorneys, and advocates for appointed counsel. Katie also represents detained and formerly detained community members in removal and bond proceedings and supervises new attorneys through the California Immigration Legal Fellowship. In addition, Katie facilitates the sharing of best practices and strategies around detained immigration litigation and rapid response and provides technical assistance and training. She is known throughout Northern California as an incredible advocate for detained community members and a resource for all those who represent them.
Ohio
Morgen Morrissette
Morgen balances patient understanding with strong leadership to achieve impressive results in recruiting and training volunteers to take complex immigration matters. In her time as pro bono coordinator, she’s trained over 220 attorneys and has placed over 150 cases for full representation. In addition, she’s gone above and beyond the call of her position and has even dedicated her own personal time and passion to pro se clinics, CLE presentations, and guest lecturing at Ohio law schools. Morgen has shown flexibility and adaptability when laws have changed and has demonstrated steadfast willingness to be a source of reliable information to burgeoning newcomer communities in the state of Ohio, including Ukrainians, Haitians, and Mauritanians.
McKinney & Namei Co, LPA
McKinney and Namei supported an asylum clinic that was held in Cincinnati last fall. McKinney brought multiple attorneys and staff volunteers who stayed on well past the finish time to assist asylum applicants at the clinic. The clinic would not have been a success without the wonderful volunteers from McKinney.
Oregon
Cole West Enabnit
AILA Oregon is proud to select Cole Enabnit for the Pro Bono Champion award. Cole is the founding member of Portland Immigration Law LLC in Portland, Oregon. He represents clients in family-based, employment, and removal defense matters. Cole has been a steady pro bono partner to Oregon nonprofits for years, but over the past two years he has been instrumental in getting out accurate legal information to Ukrainian parolees displaced by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. His Russian and Spanish language skills and asylum expertise have been instrumental to this work. In 2023, Cole assisted Sponsors Organized to Assist Refugees (SOAR) to provide legal informational sessions to the Ukrainian community to combat immigration fraud, unauthorized practice of law, and pervasive misinformation. He provided pro bono assistance in recording several "Legal Pathways for Ukrainian Parolees" webinars and has provided technical advice and support on asylum and removal questions to non-profits. He recently independently organized and provided an informational session to Kyrgyz asylum applicants who were victims of notario fraud. Cole has dedicated many hours of pro bono support to the Ukrainian community during this time of crisis and his work combatting notario fraud is commendable.
Samuel W. Asbury
AILA Oregon is proud to select Samuel W. Asbury (Sam) for the Pro Bono Champion award. A retired veteran of the U.S. Navy, Sam is the president of Immigration Solutions Inc., with offices in Florida, Oregon, and Washington. Since 1996, Sam has devoted his law practice to improving the lives of immigrants and their families. He represents clients primarily in removal proceedings, appeals, and family-based cases. He is a mentor to many AILA Oregon members and active as a mentor to immigration attorneys nationwide in the areas of family immigration and removal defense through AILA's Mentor Program. In December 2022, Sam volunteered to assist a fellow Oregon AILA member wind down his law practice to allow him to retire. In doing so, throughout 2023, Sam voluntarily took responsibility for more than 20 cases pro bono and at least a dozen more partly pro bono. Those cases ranged from tracking already-filed applications to more complex U visa and removal defense cases. He also devoted many hours to phone calls and email communication to help ensure that his colleague's clients' needs were addressed as his colleague transitioned to retirement. Oregon AILA applauds Sam’s selfless devotion and expert diligence to the immigrant community.
Philadelphia
Audrey Allen
Ms. Allen assisted in founding a monthly pro bono immigration clinic at the Irish Diaspora Center, which has assisted hundreds of immigrants in need of free legal assistance, and where she continues to volunteer monthly. She also provides free consultations at monthly immigration clinics offered at La Comunidad and Migrant Ministries, both located in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Ms. Allen handles pro bono immigration matters for clients from the Legal Clinic for the Disabled’s (LCD) Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP) with St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. Ms. Allen also trains LCD staff and healthcare partners, medical residents, social workers, and physicians at St. Christopher’s Hospital on immigration issues that impact the families LCD serves. Ms. Allen also regularly presents information to the local community, usually in Norristown, addressing topics that include Know Your Rights, options for juvenile immigrants, and humanitarian visa options. She has also partnered with a Latino community group based in Trenton and the regional Church of God chapters to give presentations to members.
Anthony Vale
Anthony Vale, known by everyone as Tony, began providing pro bono assistance to Nationalities Service Center in 2019 and has been a champion partner ever since. Tony has been active in federal court practice, representing NSC clients at the Third Circuit (successfully winning remand), writing amicus briefs for multiple Third Circuit petitions for review and volunteering to participate in moot courts and other preparation help. He has also filed numerous habeas petitions for detained clients, even following their cases around the country when they were transferred and has been critical in assuring those clients' release. But Tony is also active in individual representation at the agency level: he has represented clients in bond hearings, detained and non-detained removal proceedings, in BIA appeals, and representing individuals evacuated from Afghanistan in their affirmative asylum applications. He is active in training and supervising younger attorneys and always assures that he and those attorneys have a thorough understanding of any case. Tony can be relied on with complicated cases - those cases that require complex categorical approach analyses, those with lengthy and twisted procedural histories, and those that raise thorny issues like the terrorism inadmissibility grounds - because Tony will give these cases the care they deserve. Tony also provides pro bono assistance to other Philadelphia organizations, including HIAS PA and private AILA attorneys. He has been an invaluable partner to so many in Philadelphia and beyond and the AILA Philadelphia chapter is so grateful for his long-standing commitment to helping immigrants.
Southern California
Alina Charniauskya
Alina stepped in to help three Russian-speaking LGBTQ survivor clients at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, as she speaks the language. She was incredibly helpful developing cases with our clients in their native language and contributed a great deal to their cases in the weeks she donated to the Los Angeles LGBT Center as a volunteer before starting her new job. Alina met with clients regularly to develop their cases, write their declarations in Russian, translate them, and fill out asylum applications. She went above and beyond meeting and communicating with clients, including one homeless youth resident of the Los Angeles LGBT Center Youth Services program.
Upstate New York
Brenda Cisneros Vilchis
Brenda serves as the Director of the Detained Immigration Program at the ECBA Volunteer Lawyers Project, Inc. ECBA VLP makes a deep impact in the community and the facilitation of pro bono immigration services in the area. Specifically, under Brenda’s guidance, ECBA VLP attorneys provide representation to detained individuals in the area, and mentorship to volunteer attorneys who wish to handle a detained case. This has helped countless individuals have representation that otherwise may not have and has given a meaningful platform for attorneys in the community looking to donate their time in either an area of immigration law that they may not be as familiar or in many cases in a field of law that is entirely foreign to them. The program has been a huge success under Brenda’s leadership.
Washington, DC
Jill Marie Bussey
Jill Marie Bussey serves as Director for Public Policy for Global Refuge. Jill has gone above and beyond when it comes to helping Afghans get to the US and to be provided help and legal services since the NEO in August 2021 and even before that time. More recently, she has attended almost all the Application Support Centers and has been integral in the Admin Advocacy space arranging top level engagements to push USCIS to institute re-parole in a timely and orderly manner. She has led the efforts to resolve backlogged AOS SIV cases, as well helping all those who come to the Support Center. Last year, on her own time, she helped organize AOS clinics at NCC. These are just a few of things she has done, as there are many other things that can be said. Those who know her know how passionate she is about helping Afghans and ensuring that the US keeps its promise. Additionally, she is in the process of setting up the first of many legal sites in Baltimore, which is a new program she started in Global Refuge.
VECINA
VECINA provides access to justice to lesser-served and vulnerable members of the immigrant population. VECINA’s mission is to “empower immigrant justice advocates through mentoring attorneys, educating communities, and mobilizing volunteers.” VECINA focuses all of its work on providing access to counsel for vulnerable immigrants – in particular, Afghan evacuees, asylum seekers, and unaccompanied children in ORR custody. VECINA focuses on providing these individuals with pro bono counsel, as well as providing training and technical support to nonprofits and private immigration attorneys who represent these individuals. Most of VECINA’s work revolves around providing excellent training, mentorship, support, and case placement for pro bono attorneys who take on immigration cases for vulnerable immigrants. Since VECINA’s founding in 2019, it has quickly become a leader in promoting and supporting pro bono service among the private bar. VECINA’s training and legal support resources (all of them available for free) are created with pro bono attorneys in mind – VECINA strives to provide pro bonos, especially those new to immigration work – with exactly the resources they need to successfully complete their cases. VECINA’s innovative online trainings combine a series of short, targeted training videos with hands-on practice materials, including annotated sample briefs, declarations, and immigration forms. All of these are aimed at providing pro bonos exactly what they need to complete their cases successfully – and to feel supported as they do their work. VECINA is considered a community leader by its promotion of pro bono as a professional value and its generosity with its time and resources. Many organizations that support pro bonos provide their trainings and resource libraries only to pro bonos who take cases through them. VECINA makes all its trainings and resources available free to any pro bonos, whether or not they take cases through VECINA. More than 3,000 attorneys are currently enrolled in VECINA’s free online courses.
Washington State
Paul Soreff
Paul has done incredible work throughout his entire career and now, as a retired but still active AILA member, he has been working tirelessly for the homeless asylum seekers living at the Riverton Park United Methodist Church. He has organized numerous clinics and mobilized several organizations, students, translators, attorneys, etc. to all help and volunteer for this cause. The exact number of asylum seekers he has helped continues to grow and he continues to fight for them to access the quality help they need. As soon as he heard there was a need with the asylum seekers at the Riverton Park United Methodist Church, he immediately sprang into action to help. He first organized TPS clinics that have been helping countless Venezuelans get work permits so that they can improve their living conditions. Paul then expanded into creating asylum clinics, calling on friends, colleagues, and all contacts to rally together to help as many people as possible. He is constantly putting the community's interests first, taking time to organize the asylum seekers in order of arrival to ensure no one misses their one-year deadline. He has created excellent training programs and a system to ensure as many asylum seekers are helped as possible at every clinic. Paul is an inspiration and embodies public service and caring for others.
Wisconsin
Amanda Gennerman
Amanda Gennerman has provided invaluable pro bono legal services over the past year, both locally and nationally. On the local scene, Amanda has spent countless hours volunteering with the Community Immigration Law Center (CILC) in Madison, Wisconsin, providing free consultations and coordinating attorney volunteers for CILC’s walk-in immigration clinic that serves immigrant communities all over the state. Amanda’s pro bono work goes far beyond Wisconsin. Specifically, at the end of 2023, Amanda co-founded Project Immigration Justice for Palestinians (Project IJP), in response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Through Project IJP, Amanda has helped organize over 150 attorneys and law school students all over the U.S. to provide pro bono services to over 150 Palestinian families pursuing immigration relief and/or family reunification with relatives in the US. She has presented on national forums and coached other pro bono attorneys on matters related to Gaza and immigration relief for those affected. She continues to be an invaluable resource and support for all Project IJP participants, and an inspiration to the AILA Wisconsin chapter.
Brigette Kutschma
Before Brigette joined Soberalski Immigration Law, she spent several years at the Walworth County Literacy Services as a teacher helping immigrants in that community get comfortable with the English language and study for N-400 exams. Currently, she sits on the Lake Geneva YMCA Board of Directors where she advocates for the recognition of the growing Latino population there. Serving vulnerable immigrant populations is what drives and inspires her. She attends Walworth County-area meetings to speak on behalf of immigrant rights and gives presentations to various organizations and educational entities (including UW Whitewater, MATC, Gateway Technical College, and local high schools and middle schools) to educate these communities on how complex immigration law is. She is a natural educator, and effectively connects the dots between a thriving immigrant community and their neighbors. She volunteers multiple times a year at the Marquette Volunteer Legal Clinic, where she has helped countless individuals apply for citizenship. She also volunteers monthly at a Walworth County legal clinic, providing free consults to new immigrant arrivals in the area. In 2022 and 2023, she organized the AILA Wisconsin Chapter Citizenship Clinic and was featured in the national organization's training materials (and gave a presentation) for how to set up a productive clinic. In these same years, she also partnered with the Wisconsin State Bar to take on a pro bono affirmative asylum case for an Afghan family. She does not just volunteer, she invests herself in projects and the community, often as the driving force to make them happen.