READ: Our new comic, Broken Stems, is a story about how California prisons tear apart families by voluntarily colluding with ICE.

A person’s value should not be determined by their immigration status or whether they have been incarcerated.

Immigrant Rights

Team

Aseem Mehta

Aseem Mehta

Staff Attorney, Immigrant Rights

Aseem Mehta

Staff Attorney, Immigrant Rights

Aseem Mehta is a Staff Attorney in the Immigrant Rights Program. His work focuses on supporting incarcerated immigrants and seeking repair for individuals harmed by the state’s violence. Aseem previously advocated alongside immigrant communities against detention and deportation in New York and South Texas as an Immigrant Justice Corps Fellow. Before joining Advancing Justice – ALC, Aseem clerked for the Hon. Richard A. Paez of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Hon. Edward M. Chen of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Aseem received his law degree from Yale Law School, where he was a member of the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic. He was awarded the P.D. Soros Fellowship, Reinhardt Fellowship, and Stephen J. Massey Prize in recognition of his excellence in and commitment to lawyering in the public interest.

Lee Ann Felder-Heim

Lee Ann Felder-Heim

Staff Attorney, Immigrant Rights

Lee Ann Felder-Heim

Staff Attorney, Immigrant Rights

Lee Ann is a staff attorney in the Immigrant Rights program. Her work focuses on providing direct legal services to immigrants who are detained and facing deportation. Lee Ann previously worked alongside currently and formerly detained individuals to end their prolonged detentions and to hold private detention operators accountable for their abusive practices as a Justice Catalyst Fellow.

Lee Ann is a graduate of Berkeley Law and received her Bachelor’s degrees in Anthropology and Environmental Studies from Washington University in St. Louis.

So Young Lee

So Young Lee

Staff Attorney, Immigrant Rights

So Young Lee

Staff Attorney, Immigrant Rights

So Young is a staff attorney in the Immigrant Rights program. She provides direct legal services to immigrants who are detained and facing deportation. So Young first joined Advancing Justice – Asian Law Caucus in 2013 to organize undocumented API youth and rejoined in 2019 as a Bridge Fellow. In law school, she interned with the Immigration Defense Unit of the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office and at a private public interest firm in its deportation defense practice. So Young received her law degree from UC Hastings College of the Law.

Trevor Kosmo

Trevor Kosmo

Staff Attorney, Immigrants' Rights

Trevor Kosmo

Staff Attorney, Immigrants' Rights

Trevor is a staff attorney in the Immigrants' Rights program. He represents detained immigrants before the Immigration Courts, Board of Immigration Appeals, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and federal district courts. He also works alongside detained organizers and community partners to uplift the demands of detained and incarcerated people, with the ultimate goal of abolishing immigration detention. Trevor believes that immigration detention is violent, dangerous, inhumane and unnecessary, and envisions a world where all are free to move as needed and remain with their communities.

Trevor holds a BA in Government (with Honors) from Georgetown University, and a JD from Berkeley Law, where he was a Supervising Editor of the California Law Review.

Our Focus

For the past 20 years, we have been at the forefront of a growing movement to protect Southeast Asian refugees facing deportation. We focus our legal services on helping some of the most vulnerable in the Asian American and Pacific Islander community: low-income immigrants facing deportation due to criminal convictions. Together with community partners in the Bay Area and around the country, we work to end the mass incarceration and deportation of Southeast Asian as well as Black, Latinx, and other immigrant communities of color.

  • We provide free legal consultation and representation to Asian American and Pacific Islander immigrants and refugees in prison and immigration detention.
  • We organize and advocate with community members, families, and other immigrant rights groups to stop deportations and dismantle systems of mass incarceration.
  • We have led nationwide class action lawsuits to challenge the unlawful detention of Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees and other litigation on behalf of detained immigrants.
Person in yellow vest holds one side of banner reading "keep families together, stop deportation" that stretches onto a street.

Get Help

If you’re facing threats of deportation or detention due to a past conviction and reside in California, we might be able to help. Contact us now.

Our Work

Guides & Reports

Community Education Resources: Immigrant Rights

Know your rights about immigration enforcement, juvenile justice, and the criminal legal system in California and San Francisco.

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News

Mesa Verde Hunger Striker Files Federal Administrative Complaint Challenging ICE’s Appalling Pattern of Medical Neglect and Excessive Force

Mr. Hernandez Gomez filed a federal administrative complaint to seek accountability for the physical and mental trauma, medical negligence, abuse, and coercion he survived at the hands of ICE.

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Guides & Reports

Resources for Southeast Asian Refugees Facing Deportation

ALC provides resources and answers to common questions for people facing deportation to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Access guides on the pardon and habeas processes and how to request records.

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