Susan is an Equal Justice Works fellow in the detention project of Centro Legal’s Immigrants’ Rights Program. Susan graduated from UC Berkeley School of Law in 2018, interning at Centro Legal de la Raza, Pangea Legal Services, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and the National Origin and Immigrants’ Rights Project of Legal Aid at Work. Susan was a student in the Immigration and Clean Slate Clinics at the East Bay Community Law Center, and helped launch a cross-program post-conviction relief project to assist immigrants with criminal convictions. Susan also led a number of student-run projects, including the Berkeley Immigration Group, where she worked with Centro Legal staff to provide legal services to people detained in Contra Costa county, and helped launch an immigration bond fund. Prior to law school, Susan was a community organizer in Providence, Rhode Island for nearly ten years. Susan worked as a staff person, board member, and volunteer at grassroots organizations fighting for immigrants’ rights, racial justice, and prison abolition, and helped win policies to disentangle ICE from local policing, and to hold police accountable for racial profiling and abuse.

Susan’s fellowship focuses on incarcerated in immigrants in the Institutional Hearing Program, who are put into removal proceedings while still serving criminal sentences in federal prison. People in the IHP are overlooked and underserved–just 9% have attorneys–and regularly subjected to due process violations. While the Trump administration works to expand the little-known program, Susan is helping to create the nation’s first legal outreach program in an IHP facility. Susan’s project provides consultations and full-scope representation to people in the IHP, while advocating for policies that protect the due process rights of IHP respondents.