November 6, 2024 | A message to our community: Our strength lies in our community. We will not back down.

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 Asian Law Caucus' 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 Asian Law Caucus' Immigrant Rights Program. She provides direct legal services to immigrants who are detained and facing deportation. So Young first joined the 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, Immigrant Rights

Trevor Kosmo

Staff Attorney, Immigrant Rights

Trevor is a staff attorney in the Asian Law Caucus' Immigrant 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.
Illustration of three raised fists - the middle one is light blue and the other two have bracelets

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

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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Perspectives

‘It’s not a safe place’: the California families taking on ICE detention abuse

ICE holds people in facilities rife with abuse, medical neglect, moldy food & facilities and solitary confinement. In protest, people detained in Mesa Verde-Golden State Annex launched a labor strike.

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News

Eighty Immigrant & Civil Rights Organizations Urge DHS and ICE to Release People Who Have Won Fear-Based Protection

Letter delivered by Asian Law Caucus and groups across the country exposes ICE’s hidden, systemic practice to detain people even after judge rules they should be back with family.

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News & Perspectives

News

Eighty Immigrant & Civil Rights Organizations Urge DHS and ICE to Release People Who Have Won Fear-Based Protection

September 10, 2024

Letter delivered by Asian Law Caucus and groups across the country exposes ICE’s hidden, systemic practice to detain people even after judge rules they should be back with family.
Perspectives

‘It’s not a safe place’: the California families taking on ICE detention abuse

September 5, 2024

ICE holds people in facilities rife with abuse, medical neglect, moldy food & facilities and solitary confinement. In protest, people detained in Mesa Verde-Golden State Annex launched a labor strike.
News

Civil Rights Complaint: GEO Group Staff in Golden State Annex ICE Facility Sexually Abuse People With Impunity

August 27, 2024

Immigrants detained at the Golden State Annex ICE facility and the Asian Law Caucus filed a federal civil rights complaint against sexual abuse and harassment.