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.

Cyrina is a paralegal with the Immigrant Rights program. She collaborates with attorneys to provide legal representation to immigrants facing detention and deportation.

Before joining Advancing Justice-ALC, Cyrina worked as an immigration paralegal at a community law firm in Tucson, AZ supporting working class and poor families facing separation. Cyrina has been involved in grassroots organizing with undocumented communities along the US/Mexico border for over ten years, as a volunteer EMT and humanitarian aid worker with No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes, as a bilingual hotline administrator with the Tucson Community Rapid Response Network, and as a member of Trans Queer Pueblo where she was an organizer and advocate with LGBTQIA+ asylum seekers facing detention and deportation.

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 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 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.