Center for Immigration Innovation

Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic

Created in 2009, the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic is the longstanding centerpiece for the Center Immigration Innovation’s work on immigration education, litigation, and advocacy. Since its inception, the Clinic has been a critical partner of local and national community-based organizations and nonprofit legal service providers. The clinic has helped develop and implement some of the most important reforms in criminal and immigration law and policy of the last two decades, all while training a new generation leading immigration law advocates in their own right.

Over the last nearly two decades, the Clinic has played a critical role in developing innovative ideas in the immigration arena. Some examples include:

Developing the legal theory underlying all modern sanctuary laws. Clinic students have played a leading role in conceiving of and researching all eleven of New York City’s sanctuary laws. Collectively, these laws prohibit the city’s law enforcement personnel, and all city resources, from being drafted by the federal government into enforcing federal immigration laws.
Helping create a first-of-its-kind public defender-style system for representing detained immigrants. After the clinic faculty chaired a series of reports that document the nature and breadth of the immigrant representation crisis, clinic students helped create the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP). NYIFUP is a first-of-its-kind public defender-style system for detained immigrants facing deportation which has improved immigrants chances of success in deportation proceedings by 1100%. To date, this program has been replicated in nine states and nearly fifty counties and municipalities. It has been shown to drastically increase the odds of an immigrant successfully arguing that they should not be detained and ultimately prevailing in their immigration case to avoid deportation.
Clinic students helped formulate the legal theory that allowed advocates to successfully push to pass the One Day to Protect New Yorkers Act, which reduced the maximum penalty for a misdemeanor offense from 365 days to 364 days. This seemingly minor change was critical to remedy a discrepancy between New York State criminal law and federal immigration law—cutting off an pipeline that was funneling thousands of immigrants into immigration detention and removal proceedings for minor offenses.

National Immigration Habeas Institute

The National Immigration Habeas Institute (NIHI) is a new joint venture between the Center for Immigration Innovation at Cardozo Law School and the National Immigration Litigation Alliance.

NIHI was launched in August 2025 in response to the federal government’s vast expansion of immigration detention and its rapidly evolving immigration enforcement tactics—pushing the boundaries of law and constitutional protections. Meanwhile, deportation defense attorneys, experienced in practice in the nation’s administrative immigration courts, are increasingly finding those courts unable or unwilling to vindicate the rights of their clients.

Accordingly, the battleground for defending detained immigrants has now expanded beyond the immigration courts and into federal district court, where the substantive law, procedures, opposing counsel, and norms of practice are vastly different. Habeas corpus petitions filed in federal district courts are now the primary vehicle to vindicate the rights of detained immigrants.

Learn more about NIHI here.

Immigration Research Institute

The Immigration Research Institute is a think tank that supports innovative scholarship, elevates the voices of thought leaders, and promotes effective public communication in the immigration space.

In furtherance of its goal to cultivate new ideas for how the immigration system can evolve and change, the research institute hosts an annual Cardozo Immigration Enforcement Workshop, convening leading scholars from around the nation to discuss research on issues related to immigration enforcement, including immigration arrests, detention, surveillance, and border enforcement.

The research institute is also home to an immigration speaker series. Past speakers and panelists have included Murad Awawdeh (New York Immigration Coalition), Harold Solis (Make the Road New York), Ahilan Arulanantham (UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy), Omar Jadwat (ACLU Immigrant Rights Project), and people who gained expertise through lived experience within the immigration system.

Finally, the research institute’s faculty regularly engages in public education work, explaining the complexities of immigration law and policy to the public in such popular media outlets as:

Another Student Detained Over Pro-Palestinian Views | NPR (Lindsay Nash)
Legal Analysis of Mahmoud Khalil's Arrest | NPR (Peter Markowitz)
Noor Abdalla on the arrest of her husband, Mahmoud Khalil: "I was terrified" | CBS Sunday Morning (Lindsay Nash)
NYC’s sanctuary law helps defeat crime | The New York Daily News (Peter Markowitz)
Mayor Should Recuse Himself from Defending Sanctuary City Policies Against President, Says Comptroller | The City (Peter Markowitz)
Mahmoud Khalil’s Constitutional Rights and the Power of ICE | The New Yorker (Lindsay Nash)
Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Is Specifically Targeting Children Again | Slate (Haiyun Damon-Feng)
Immigration agents demand tenant information from landlords, stirring questions and confusion | AP (Lindsay Nash)

Notable Alums of the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic

one teaching fellow and three immigration justice clinic alumni

Andrea Saenz (above left), Clinical Teaching Fellow 2013-2016:

During her time at the clinic, Andrea served as a critical thought partner during the development of New York City’s public defender program for detained immigrants (NYIFUP). She went on to lead the implementation of NYIFUP as the head of the Brooklyn Defender Services immigration unit. In October 2021, Andrea was appointed to be a member of the Board of Immigration Appeals (the nation’s highest immigration court), where she served until she was removed by the current administration. Andrea will bring her immense immigration law expertise back to the Clinic as the Managing Director of the Center’s National Immigration Habeas Institute (NIHI).

Karla Ostolaza (above left-center), Clinical Student, Cardozo School of Law '14:

After graduating from Cardozo, Karla was selected to be a member of the inaugural class of the Immigrant Justice Corps, a first-of-its-kind fellowship to train budding immigration advocates on the frontlines of immigrant representation. She was placed in the NYIFUP program at Bronx Defenders, where she represented detained immigrants in bond and merits proceedings. After her fellowship, Karla became a supervisor in the NYIFUP program at the Legal Aid Society before returning to Bronx Defenders, where she is now the Managing Director of the Immigration Practice.

Nick Phillips (above right-center), Clinical Student, Cardozo School of Law '14:

After graduating from Cardozo, Nick Phillips was a member of the 2015 Immigrant Justice Corps class, where he worked at Pace Community Law Practice to represent unaccompanied children in deportation proceedings. After his fellowship, Nick moved to the immigration practice at Prisoners Legal Services of New York, where he worked with a team of attorneys to establish a public defender system for indigent noncitizens facing deportation proceedings while incarcerated in New York State prison. Together, Nick and his team successfully litigated several precedential cases before the Board of Immigration Appeals and Second Circuit Court of Appeals, including Brathwaite v. Garland, a decision which established that noncitizens cannot be deported based on convictions which are pending on direct appeal. He is now a solo practitioner in Harrisonburg, VA, and his practice focuses on asylum, family-based immigration, and deportation defense.

Stephanie Alvarez-Jones (above right), Clinical Student, Cardozo School of Law '18:

At Cardozo, Stephanie Alvarez-Jones was part of the inaugural class of the Advanced Immigration Justice Clinic as well as of the Clinic’s inaugural service trip to represent families detained at the family detention center in Dilley, TX. Between two clerkships—one with the New Jersey Supreme Court and the other in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York—Stephanie served as a Justice Catalyst Fellow at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, representing families at the same detention center where she had volunteered as a clinical student. Stephanie is now the Southeast Regional Attorney at for the National Immigration Project, of the National Lawyers Guild where she focuses on litigation and advocacy in collaboration with local and regional partners to protect the rights of immigrants.