NIJC Staff

Heartland Alliance's National Immigrant Justice Center's staff is composed of dedicated human rights activists from a broad range of advocacy and legal backgrounds. Our legal services staff includes licensed attorneys, paralegals, and Board of Immigration Appeals-accredited representatives. NIJC staff speak a variety of languages, including Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Mandarin, Urdu, and Punjabi.

Staff members can be contacted by email using the following format: [first initial][last name]@heartlandalliance.org.

Rocío Alcántar is a staff attorney for NIJC’s Immigrant Legal Defense and Counter-Trafficking projects. Prior to joining NIJC, Rocío interned with the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica. While a law student she participated in the Asylum and Immigration Law Clinic and was a Sullivan Human Rights Fellow for the International Human Rights Institute.  Rocío graduated from DePaul University College of Law in 2010 and is licensed in the State of Illinois.

Michele Amatangelo is the Resource Development Director. Michele previously served as a Sudan Program Manager at USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives in Washington, D.C. Prior to USAID, she spent a number of years in the private sector and also served as an economic development volunteer in the Peace Corps in Honduras. She received a bachelor of science in finance from Boston College and an master's of science in foreign service with a certificate in refugee and humanitarian emergencies from Georgetown University.

Claire Coogan serves as the Pro Bono Project Coordinator.  Claire graduated from the College of William and Mary in January 2011 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in European Studies.  She has studied in La Plata, Argentina, with the Comisión por la Memoria de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, and interned with their Comité Contra la Tortura.  She has also worked as an ESL volunteer and traveled through Argentina, Uruguay, France, and the UK.

Azadeh Erfani is a paralegal in the Immigrant Legal Defense Project. Prior to joining NIJC, she worked as an AmeriCorps scholar in Association House of Chicago, providing ESL and Citizenship services. Azadeh has a Bachelors of Arts in philosophy and Spanish from Bryn Mawr College and a Masters of Arts in philosophy from DePaul University. She has traveled, studied, and volunteered in France, Argentina, and Mexico. 

Vanessa Esparza-López is a staff attorney with the Immigrant Legal Defense Project, where she provides legal representation to immigrants in administrative applications and removal proceedings. Vanessa previously interned with NIJC in 2008 and 2009. Prior to joining NIJC as a staff attorney, Vanessa practiced immigration law at a private firm. Vanessa is an active member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), where she has volunteered by representing foreign nationals in bond hearings and presenting detained foreign nationals with “Know Your Rights” presentations. She obtained her J.D. from DePaul University College of Law in 2009 and her B.A., with honors, in International Studies from DePaul University in 2006. During law school, Vanessa was the cofounder of a new student group: the Society for Asylum & Immigration Law. She is licensed in the State of Illinois.

Mark Fleming is the National Litigation Coordinator.  Prior to joining NIJC, Mark was a staff attorney at the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights focused on migrants' rights in the western hemisphere.  In that capacity, he coordinated the Inter-American Commission's investigation into human rights concerns with U.S. immigration enforcement and detention, and detention's impact on due process.  Mark graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 2006. While in law school, he worked on a host of immigrants' rights projects, including representing asylum seekers and coordinating a fact-finding mission to Ecuador to investigate the impacts of changes to U.S. immigration law on Colombian refugees.  Mark is licensed by the State of New York and the District of Columbia.

Alexandra Fung is the staff attorney for the Immigrant Children's Protection Project.  She conducts Know Your Rights presentation to unaccompanied immigrant children, represents children in immigration court, and assesses for assignment to pro bono attorneys. She is a graduate of New York University School of Law and the University of Notre Dame.  While in law school, Alexandra worked with immigrant populations through her internships at The Door, Inc. and Catholic Charities Community Services.  She also represented clients in New York University's Equal Justice and Capital Defender and Family Defense Clinics.

Joe Gietl is a paralegal working with the Immigrant Legal Defense Project.  Joe graduated from Marquette University in 2006 with an honors bachelor of arts degree in International Affairs.  He has traveled, studied, and volunteered extensively in Latin America.   In the years following graduation, Joe worked in Los Angeles, California, as a non-profit paralegal in immigration, government benefits, and tenant rights law.  Joe is a part-time evening student at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and is the recipient of the Chicago Bar Foundation's 2010 Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Public Interest Law Scholarship.

Manoj Govindaiah is a supervising attorney for the Immigrant Children's Protection Project and Immigrant Legal Defense Project.  He represents detained children and non-detained individuals before the immigration courts and the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security, State, and Justice.  Prior to joining the NIJC, Manoj was an attorney at The Immigration Project in Granite City, Illinois.  He is a 2006 graduate of the University of Illinois College of Law and was admitted to the Illinois Bar in 2006.

Kelin Hall is a paralegal with the Counter-Trafficking Project and the Immigrant Legal Defense Project. Kelin graduated from the University of Chicago in 2009. She received high honors for her BA thesis discussing the impact of international human rights advocates on U.S. foreign policy at the end of the Cold War. Kelin received funding to intern at Human Rights Watch and to conduct research in Peru on corruption and human rights violations. She discussed her research on WBEZ Chicago Public Radio, where she later interned while working as a freelance journalist.

Ashley Huebner is a supervising attorney for the Asylum Project. Ashley provides training and legal support to pro bono attorneys representing asylum seekers through NIJC and also represents individuals seeking asylum and other immigration relief.  Before joining NIJC, she was the judicial law clerk for the Orlando Immigration Court.  She also interned with the Boston Immigration Court, Catholic Charities' immigration department in Boston, and was a law clerk for a private immigration firm.  Ashley graduated from Boston University School of Law in 2007 and is licensed in the State of Illinois.

Elizabeth Kalmbach is the Detention Project Coordinator.  She oversees initial screening of detained immigrants who contact NIJC for legal assistance. She also coordinates the Know Your Rights program, which provides legal rights presentations and one-on-one legal intake to detainees at six detention facilities in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Kentucky.  Prior to coming to NIJC, Elizabeth worked at Annunciation House, an emergency shelter for immigrants and refugees on the U.S./Mexico border.  She graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006 with a bachelor's in international studies.

Rebecca Knight is a paralegal working with the Immigrant Children's Protection Project. Becca graduated from Marquette University with a BA in Spanish and Social Welfare & Justice in May 2010, where she spent a year interning at the Latina Resource Center, a domestic violence advocacy agency in Milwaukee. Prior to joining NIJC, she worked at a non profit organization in Los Angeles, CA as a Teacher's Assistant in an at-risk high school. Rebecca studied abroad in Madrid, Spain and spent time volunteering in Honduras.

Lisa Koop is a managing attorney at NIJC, were she contributes to the Asylum, LGBT Immigrant Rights Initiative, Litigation and Immigrant Legal Defense projects.  Before joining NIJC, Lisa completed a two-year fellowship at the Notre Dame Legal Clinic, where she taught law students who handled immigration cases.  Lisa graduated magna cum laude from Indiana University School of Law in Indianapolis in 2004.

Hena Mansori is an attorney with NIJC's Detention Project. Hena previously volunteered with NIJC in 2002 and 2003. During law school, Hena interned with Lawyers for Children in New York and the ACLU of Illinois in Chicago, and represented clients in New York University's Immigrant Rights Clinic.  Hena has also worked with the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago.  Hena graduated from New York University School of Law in 2006 and is licensed in the State of Illinois.

Catherine Matthews is a paralegal with the Immigrant Children’s Protection Project. Catherine graduated from the University of Richmond in 2011 where she majored in both Spanish and a self-designed Global Human Rights program which culminated in an independent thesis focusing on male victims of sexual and gender-based violence in conflict. Catherine studied abroad in Spain, Argentina, and Kenya, where she researched ethnic interactions and gang violence in the capital’s largest slum. She has also interned with Physicians for Human Rights and volunteered with a refugee family in Richmond, VA.

Natalie Maust is a paralegal for the Immigrant Legal Defense and Immigrant Children's Protection projects.  Prior to joining NIJC, Natalie interned with Paz y Esperanza, a Peruvian human rights organization, publicly presenting her diagnostic research on domestic violence at the district-level and serving as technical translator for trainings related to criminal investigation of child sexual abuse.  Natalie obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree at Wheaton College in Anthropology and Spanish with a Human Needs and Global Resources Certificate in 2009.

Mary McCann Sanchez oversees NIJC's resource management and assists in the coordination of the Detention, Democracy & Due Process (D3P) project.  Mary has educational experience with immigrant communities in the United States, direct service work with refugees and displaced communities under the auspices of the United Nations High Commission of Refugees, and post-war social reconstruction work in Central America with the American Friends Service Committee. Before joining NIJC in 2010, Mary worked as a consultant in planning, monitoring, and evaluation with development agencies in Latin America. Mary has masters degrees from the University of Notre Dame and Northern Illinois University.

Mary Meg McCarthy is the executive director of Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), one of the nation’s leading immigrant and human rights advocacy organizations.  Under her leadership, NIJC has grown from a staff of eight to forty, serving 10,000 noncitizens each year through an unparalleled network of more than 1,000 pro bono attorneys.  Through its unique combination of direct service, impact litigation and advocacy, NIJC promotes due process protections before the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress and the Administration.  Prior to joining NIJC in 1998, Mary Meg practiced civil litigation and served as a pro bono attorney for NIJC’s asylum project.  Mary Meg has testified before Congressional Committees on human rights and immigration detention reform.  In addition, she is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences on human rights and immigration law and has been quoted in leading news outlets such as The New York Times.  Mary Meg has provided local, national and international audiences with chilling evidence of the civil rights abuses that plagued immigrant communities in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Early in her career, Mary Meg lived in Chile where she worked in local communities to help safeguard the rights of individuals living under a dictatorship.  She is a recipient of numerous awards, including the Robert Bellarmine Award from Loyola University Chicago School of Law for distinguished alumni, Chicago AILA Chapter’s Joseph Minsky Mentor Award, Lawyers Trust Fund’s Esther Rothstein Award, and the Federal Bar Association's Sarah T. Hughes Civil Rights Award.

Alexis Perlmutter serves as NIJC's policy and new media manager.  She has worked at the Brennan Center for Justice, advocating for campaign finance reform and the right to vote for formerly incarcerated individuals.  At Amnesty International, she created education and community outreach materials to address gender-based violence, child soldiers, and human trafficking.  Alexis graduated from New York University.

Jackie Reidelberger is a BIA-Accredited Representative for the Immigrant Legal Defense Project and LGBT Immigrant Rights Initiative. Before joining NIJC, Jackie spent time in northern Mexico and Guatemala, where she studied economic development and social justice issues relating to immigration. Jackie graduated from DePaul University with a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies in 2007.

Mary Roche is a paralegal with the Immigrant Legal Defense Project. She graduated with honors from Tulane University in 2007 with a Bachelors of Arts in Latin American Studies and Art History. Before coming to NIJC, Mary taught ESL at Poder Learning Center in Chicago. She has also studied and taught in Spain and worked as a citizenship volunteer.

Esperanza Rodriguez is the receptionist for NIJC’s office in downtown Chicago and helps to manage all administrative needs of the office. Esperanza has been working for NIJC since 1987.

Chuck Roth is the Director of Litigation. He provides legal support to pro bono attorneys and serves as the liaison for litigation cases in which NIJC acts as co-counsel with major law firms. Chuck is a 1996 graduate of the University of Notre Dame Law School and is licensed by the State of New York.

Mony Ruiz-Velasco is the Director of Legal Services. Although she is involved in all NIJC projects, Mony directly oversees Immigrant Legal Defense, Immigrant Children's Protection, and gender-based protection projects. Mony worked with NIJC in 2000-2002 developing its Asylum, Counter-trafficking and Immigrant Children's Protection projects. Mony also worked in private immigration law practice. Previously, Mony was an attorney advisor under the Attorney General's Honors Program at the Executive Office for Immigration Review. Mony is a 1999 graduate of St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas and is licensed in Texas.

Karolyn Talbert is a managing attorney at NIJC, where she contributes to the Immigrant Legal Defense and Defender's Initiative projects.  She also provides training and technical support to pro bono attorneys working on Violence Against Women Act cases.  Before joining NIJC, Karolyn was the attorney advisor for the immigration court in Chicago. She also interned at several nonprofit organizations including the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Farmworker Legal Services, and the Immigration Assistance Project.  Karolyn graduated from the University of Iowa College of Law in 2002 and is licensed in the state of Illinois.

Trisha K. Teofilo is a legal supervisor for NIJC’s Immigrant Legal Defense project.  Prior to joining NIJC, Trisha was a BIA-Accredited Representative at World Relief-Chicago and Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston.  While at Catholic Charities, she supervised the Crime Victims Program, was the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Coordinator and the Pro Bono Coordinator.  Trisha also worked as the senior legal assistant for a private immigration firm.  She has participated in the VAWA/U Visa collaborative in Chicago since 2005.  Trisha graduated magna cum laude from Loyola University Chicago with an honors Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and minors in Spanish and International Studies.

Tara Tidwell Cullen is the Associate Director of Communications. She works with members of the media to tell stories about the need for fair and humane immigration laws, and manages NIJC's website and online outreach. Tara previously served as the managing editor of Cultural Survival Quarterly and has been a freelance reporter and event organizer for a number of other social justice organizations. She received a bachelor’s degree in journalism and international studies from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in media, culture, and society from DePaul University.

Julia Toepfer is the Marketing and Communications Coordinator at NIJC, where she raises awareness of and garners support for immigrants’ rights by sharing their stories. Julia has worked in nonprofit communications and management for organizations in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Boston. She was a legal assistant for an immigration law firm in Boston, worked on a collaborative campaign to achieve in-state college tuition for immigrant students in Massachusetts, and worked on advancing human rights in Guatemala with the Chicago-based Health, Education and Relief Foundation. Julia attended Boston College where she earned a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in Latin American studies.

Melissa Untereker is a supervising attorney with the Immigrant Legal Defense Project, where she provides legal representation to immigrants in administrative applications and deportation proceedings.  Melissa is also a frequent presenter on immigration topics to pro bono attorneys and community advocates.  Prior to joining NIJC as a staff attorney, Melissa advocated for the rights of low-wage immigrant workers as a union organizer with AFSCME in the Chicago area.  Melissa served as co-chair of the CBA/YLS Immigration Committee in 2007/2008.  Melissa received her B.A. from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001 and her J.D. from DePaul College of Law in 2006.  She is licensed in the State of Illinois.

Claudia Valenzuela is the Associate Director of Litigation. Claudia represents non-citizens before the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) and the federal courts via removal defense, impact litigation and administrative advocacy. She is a 2002 graduate of DePaul University’s College of Law and is a former Equal Justice Works Fellow (EJW). Prior to her graduation from the DePaul, Claudia served as a legal intern for NIJC developing a program for outreach and legal services to Chicago’s Guatemalan and Salvadoran communities. Claudia is licensed by the State of Illinois.

Esperanza Walczak is the receptionist for NIJC and has provided primary office management and support for NIJC’s staff and clients for more than 20 years.

Sarah Rose Weinman is an Equal Justice Works Fellow and attorney working with NIJC's Detention and Litigation Projects. Sarah's project seeks to protect the rights of immigrants who are in deportation proceedings due to prior criminal convictions that were constitutionally defective and to assist criminal defense attorneys to safeguard the rights of their non-citizen clients during criminal proceedings, in compliance with the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Padilla v. Kentucky. Sarah joined NIJC after working at an indigent defense law office in New York City and clerking in the U.S. Federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. She attended law school at the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall), and obtained her bachelor's degree from Reed College. Between college and law school, she worked as NIJC's Policy and Program Liaison. Sarah is licensed to practice law in New York. Her fellowship is generously sponsored by Baker & McKenzie LLP.

Eleni Wolfe-Roubatis is a supervising attorney for NIJC's Detention Project. She previously interned the project as an Equal Justice Works summer corps volunteer and worked as a paralegal in NIJC’s Immigrant Legal Defense Project. While a law student at DePaul University College of Law, Eleni participated in the Asylum and Immigration Law Clinic and in the Chiapas Human Rights Practicum. Eleni currently represents individuals in immigration custody before the immigration court, the Board of Immigration Appeals, the District Courts and the Courts of Appeals. Eleni has been a licensed attorney with the state of Illinois since 2007.

Kim Ybarra is National Litigation Project Coordinator. Prior to joining NIJC, Kim interned with Heartland Alliance’s International Programs, working on programming within the Middle East and Latin America for at-risk populations including internally displaced people, refugees, and child soldiers. She has traveled, studied, and volunteered throughout Mexico, Italy, and Dominican Republic. Kim graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and in International Studies from the University of Dayton in May 2009, and received her master’s degree in International Relations from the University of Chicago in June 2010.

Jane Zurnamer is the Director of Policy at NIJC, where she monitors legislative developments and produces reports and advocacy material to educate policy makers, government officials, and the public on human rights abuses in the U.S. immigration system. Prior to relocating to the United States, Jane was the pro bono coordinator and social justice attorney at Minter Ellison (Australia) representing immigrants and refugees, indigenous, and homeless clients. Jane has been a licensed attorney in Australia since 2006 and is currently completing a Masters of Human Rights Law at Melbourne University.

Keren Zwick is the supervising attorney for NIJC's LGBT Immigrant Rights Initiative. Keren joined NIJC following two years of clerking for the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. While Keren was a law student at Columbia Law School, she successfully represented clients in the Sexuality & Gender Law Clinic. Before law school, Keren attended the University of Chicago and worked as NIJC's asylum project coordinator.  Keren is licensed to practice law in Illinois.