This webinar will discuss obtaining T visas for youth clients. Many immigrant youth are survivors of human trafficking and are eligible for T visas, but are unable to access this crucial but underutilized form of relief. We will explore the requirements for T visa eligibility, give an overview of the application process, and provide advocates with strategies on how to properly screen clients, with a special focus on how trafficking flags present themselves in youth cases.
Presenters
Andrew joined the ILRC in May 2019 as a Staff Attorney focusing on immigrant youth issues. Prior to joining the ILRC, he worked at Staten Island Legal Services representing clients in a variety of affirmative and defensive immigration matters. Previously, Andrew worked at the Unaccompanied Minors Program of Catholic Charities Community Services in New York, representing detained and released unaccompanied minors in removal defense.
Andrew received his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center, where he participated in the Center for Applied Legal Studies Clinic. Andrew earned his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, where he majored in Political Economy of Industrial Societies. Andrew is admitted to the bar in New Jersey and New York. He is fluent in French and Spanish with some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, and Arabic.
Cindy Liou - State Policy Director, Kids in Need of Defense
Cindy Liou first joined KIND in 2016 as the Deputy Director of Legal Services. Prior to KIND, she was the Director of the Human Trafficking Project at Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach, where she also co-counseled several civil litigation cases on behalf of human trafficking survivors, and provided direct legal representation for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, elder abuse, child abuse and exploitation, and hate crimes. She has also provided consulting and training on topics ranging from domestic violence lethality, strategies on addressing and messaging anti-violence issues with immigrant communities, language access, to the collaboration of legal services, social services, and law enforcement in cross-disciplinary teams. Cindy is also the author of several articles and manuals, and has provided extensive updates to the Human Trafficking Task Force e-Guide developed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) and Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA). She is the recipient of the 2013 San Francisco Collaborative Against Human Trafficking Modern Day Abolitionist Award for Policy and Advocacy and the 2018 Paul and Sheila Wellstone Award from the Freedom Network to Empower Trafficked and Enslaved Persons (USA). She also handled a variety of pro bono cases as an associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC. Cindy is a graduate from Stanford Law School and the University of Washington.
Rebekah Fletcher is the Deputy Director for Legal Training and Technical Assistance at KIND, helping to develop training programs and provide legal technical assistance to field office staff and pro bono attorneys. Rebekah has practiced in the area of children’s immigration law for over 11 years. From 2008-2015 she was an attorney with KIND’s Seattle office and its predecessor, Volunteer Advocates for Immigrant Justice, helping to build its legal services program for detained unaccompanied children in Washington State. She subsequently joined the U. of Washington School of Law’s Children and Youth Advocacy Clinic, where she taught immigration law course content and oversaw student representation of child clients in state courts and immigration proceedings. In 2016 Rebekah was a consultant to UNHCR, assisting with its monitoring effort of the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s national program for the custody of unaccompanied children. She returned to KIND’s Seattle office in 2018 as Supervising Attorney for Detained Programs before becoming Deputy Director. Rebekah is a 2007 graduate of the City U. of New York School of Law.