When Every Hour Counts Fast-Action Advocacy for Unlawful Detention and ICE Courthouse Arrests

Erin E. Meyer | Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP

Erin E. Meyer is a Partner at Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP in San Francisco, where she leads high-stakes complex litigation and maintains a robust pro bono practice dedicated to representing asylum seekers, children and other vulnerable immigrants. Although her corporate-trial work has spanned billion-dollar fraud cases, class actions and technology disputes, Erin’s early career included a public‐interest fellowship representing individuals seeking asylum before the Immigration Court, laying the foundation for her enduring commitment to immigration and civil‐rights advocacy.

Her pro bono work includes obtaining immigration relief for women and children fleeing abuse and persecution, in partnership with organizations like Legal Services for Children and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. More recently, Erin has taken lead roles in litigation challenging immigration-enforcement policies implicating constitutional and statutory due process, including filing briefings in cases involving re-detentions of non-citizens released under bond and attacking agency actions as arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act.

In her commercial-litigation portfolio, Erin has achieved numerous defense victories, including complete defense judgments for major clients in multi-week trials. These successes reflect her capacity for rapid preparation, high-stakes motion practice, and crisis-response advocacy, skills that translate directly into emergency immigration litigation contexts.

Jonhatan A. Aragon | Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP

Jonhatan A. Aragon is an Associate at Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP in San Francisco, where he represents clients in a broad range of civil and criminal matters, with trial and appellate experience. In addition to his corporate-trial work, Jonhatan maintains a robust pro bono practice focused on asylum and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) relief. His distinguished background includes federal clerkships with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, and the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada.

During law school at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, Jonhatan served in the Ninth Circuit Appellate Litigation Clinic, where he represented clients in immigration-relief disputes alongside intellectual-property matters. Before law school, he worked as an assistant to the President & General Counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and as a paralegal at the Federal Defenders of New York, reflecting long-standing dedication to access-to-justice work.

Erin Meyer and Jonhatan Aragon recently secured the emergency release of an asylum-seeker from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody within 48 hours by leveraging federal habeas corpus and rapid-response litigation strategies. That case illustrates his ability to mobilize under extreme time constraints, build a persuasive record, and navigate the intersection of immigration, constitutional, and federal-court practice.

Karen Lucas | The American Immigration Council

Karen Siciliano Lucas is the Immigration Justice Campaign Director at the American Immigration Council. Previously, Karen worked at the American Immigration Lawyers Association as the Associate Director for Advocacy and at the Catholic Legal Immigration Network as the State and Local Advocacy Attorney. Karen began her legal career as a litigation associate at the New York firm Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP. She has a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and an B.A. from Princeton University.

Barbara Camacho | Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, LLP

Barbara became the firm’s first Pro Bono Counsel in October 2016, after two years as Pro Bono Manager and three years as the Fragomen Fellow at the City Bar Justice Center. As Pro Bono Counsel, Barbara is responsible for managing the firm’s pro bono initiatives throughout the United States. In this connection, she has overall responsibility for coordinating and mentoring Fragomen attorneys in the United States in their pro bono representation of clients in removal proceedings, asylum, and applications for a variety of available immigration benefits. She is also responsible for developing and providing training to volunteer attorneys, supervising and litigating pro bono cases, and acting as the firm’s liaison to various non-profit legal service providers with which the firm partners. Barbara is a frequent panelist on a variety of immigration issues, including removal defense and children’s immigration issues before bar associations, community groups and child protective agency personnel.

In her former position as the Fragomen Fellow at the City Bar Justice Center, Barbara directed the Center’s Immigrant Outreach Project, which included the Varick Removal Defense Project. She worked to expand the Justice Center’s recruitment, training and mentoring of pro bono attorneys from leading law firms to address the crisis in lack of counsel for detained immigration cases in the New York metropolitan area. Barbara served as a mentor to pro bono attorneys in addition to providing direct representation to immigrant clients, both detained and non-detained. Expanding on the tremendous foundation laid by prior Fragomen Fellows, she also continued to develop, supervise and strengthen pro bono immigration outreach clinics and activities to benefit the community at large.

Prior to serving as the Fragomen Fellow, Barbara had six years of comprehensive immigration experience, including three years as a paralegal at Fragomen, followed by three years after law school as the Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) Fellow at the American Friends Service Committee in New Jersey, where she specialized in removal defense of children (both detained and non-detained) in the Immigration Court. She also has the distinction of having been selected as an immigration subject matter expert by the New Jersey Child Welfare Training Partnership, where she was charged with training the management, supervisors and staff members of New Jersey’s child protection agency on immigration relief options for children in its care. Previously, Barbara was a Law Clerk for the Presiding Judge of the Superior Court, Criminal Division in Morris County, New Jersey.

Rachel Beardsley | Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, LLP

Rachel serves as a trusted advisor to clients by providing strategic legal advice and developing immigration strategies for program management. She partners with clients to provide advance planning for the mobilization of their workforces and helps them use immigration as a tool for talent acquisition and retention. Through her immigration experience, Rachel has a keen ability to anticipate evolving immigration trends and identify and mitigate risks for clients. She advises a diverse client base on a variety of corporate immigration matters, including nonimmigrant visas, consular processing, permanent residence and citizenship.

Rachel’s representative experience ranges from global Fortune 500 companies to boutique organizations and private client matters. Born and raised in Iowa, she is deeply connected to the agricultural community specifically and understands the needs of the agribusiness sector as they relate to immigration, successfully representing large, corporate production companies in the space. While she has stayed close to her Iowa roots, she has also built a robust presence in the New York City metropolitan area over the course of two decades, practicing in a wide range of sectors, such as financial services, fintech, legal, consulting, fragrances/cosmetics, manufacturing, professional sailing, wind energy and the nonprofit space.

Rachel is committed to quality service when partnering with her clients to solve their greatest challenges and also in her efforts as a team leader. She believes her team members are some of her greatest assets and aims to cultivate a collaborative, positive internal culture that carries outward to, in turn, produce the highest level of service to clients. She also frequently leads immigration workshops for students at an array of universities across the United States, sharing insights on careers in immigration law, immigration options for international students and more.

Session I – Rapid Response: How Attorneys Can Make a Difference in Pro Bono Immigration | 1:00pm -2:00pm

• Spotting unlawful detention and identifying federal remedies
  • Recognizing due process violations when ICE agents re-detain individuals without a warrant or hearing
  • Understanding when habeas corpus or injunctive relief in federal court may be appropriate
• Building and filing an emergency TRO in under 24 hours
  • Practical steps for assembling declarations, drafting pleadings, and contacting government counsel on short notice
  • Leveraging legal precedents to support constitutional claims
• The power of the record: Declarations, facts, and speed in emergency litigation
  • Developing a compelling factual record under extreme pressure
  • Identifying evidence of harm and documenting government misconduct
• Judicial receptivity and constitutional strategy in federal habeas practice
  • Successful cases in this context, including Ramirez Clavijo v. Kaiser
  • Transitioning from emergency relief to broader litigation and policy impact

Break | 2:00pm – 2:10pm

Session II – ICE Courthouse Arrests: A Volunteer-Based Rapid Response Observation Project | 2:10pm – 3:10pm

• Rapid response playbook: What it is, who we engaged, and why it matters
• Preparing volunteers new to immigration court
• Ethical guardrails for limited-scope and emergency representation
• Practical first steps for attorneys joining pro bono immigration matters
• Other ways to support rapid response