Lady and her two boys!
For our client of the month for May we have a perfect Client for Mother’s Day! Here we celebrate a woman who did what mothers do best- protect her children and create a better life for them. We are happy to share that Lady and her sons, Diego and Juan, were granted asylum! Ava Benach represented them before the immigration court in New York. 
This month, we are so pleased to celebrate our client Edimilson Mendes Ferreira, who just won his case to remain in the United States with his family after years of waiting in Immigration Court.
Edimilson has lived in the United States for nearly two decades. In that time, he has raised two daughters and become a grandfather to three US citizen grandchildren. He has started his own successful housecleaning business, which he has now run for over a decade, servicing clients throughout the greater Washington region. 
Azeb and Dree Collopy
We are happy to once again begin our client of the month series with a Dree Collopy victory! This month, we celebrate our client Azeb, who was granted asylum from Ethiopia after a long battle to obtain the safety in this country that she deserves. Azeb fled to the US after she had been wrongfully imprisoned in Ethiopia for standing up to government harm to journalists and political opponents. 
Last month, after I posted about the Attorney General (AG)’s decision in Matter of A-B-, I went home, stood on the roof of my building, and just yelled for a while. It felt good to vocalize some of the horror that this administration makes me feel. Of course, yelling isn’t a solution. If it was, we’d long since be out of this mess. Instead, we have seen the administration make even bolder attempts to limit legal immigration over the last month (leading to, you guessed it, more yelling). 
It’s another rough day to be an immigration attorney in America. Yesterday, a decision was issued that seriously undermines the ability of immigrants to seek asylum in this country. The administration is continuing its war against immigrants, building its invisible wall to complement the one they want to put on the border and finding new ways to keep immigrants from coming here or from obtaining protections.
A crazy thing about our immigration system it is that the Immigration Courts are entirely under the control of the Department of Justice (DOJ). 
Our May 2018 clients of the month are Marcelle de Lima and Luciano da Silva. Marcelle and Luciano are from Brazil and they came to the United States after the Brazilian economy started to decline in 2001 and they lost their jobs. When they came to the U.S., neither could speak English and they had to start their lives over from scratch. They were resourceful and determined to build a stable and happy life for themselves and their future children. 
This month, we are pleased to honor Angie Salguero as our Client of the Month. Angie, a transgender woman from El Salvador, won her case for asylum last month in front of the immigration judge in Baltimore, MD.
Angie’s story of violence and persecution from a very young age included physical abuse by the police and gangs, the loss of family, a dangerous trip to the United States, and stay in immigration detention. 
I have heard from a lot of people expressing outrage over the fate of Adam Crapser, the Korean adoptee who was ordered deported earlier this week. I get and share the outrage and would like to help channel the outrage into an increased awareness of the many failures this case represents.
If you have not seen the adorable photos of Adam as a young boy or holding his infant child, a brief summary. 
Our client of the month for June 2016 is Julia Marquez. Ms. Marquez fled her native Venezuela with her son after suffering systematic and targeted attacks by the Venezuelan government and the government-backed paramilitary groups. Ms. Marquez was targeted in Venezuela because, as a journalist and political activist, she dared to expose the corrupt and discriminatory practices of the Chavez regime and was dedicated to bringing democracy back to Venezuela. 
Sometimes our work is in fixing the errors of previous attorneys. That is what happened to Rudi and Alba Reyes, who walked into our offices with removal orders entered by an immigration judge in Baltimore, MD. The immigration judge ordered them removed after their lawyer failed to file an application for a waiver of inadmissibility with the court as requested by the court. The removal order potentially meant that this couple who have lived in the U.S.