Jessica Olive ’20 and William Granados ’20 Named 2020 Immigrant Justice Corps Fellows

Jessica Olive ’20 and William Granados ’20 have been selected for postgraduate Immigrant Justice Corps (IJC) Fellowships. They join 24 other fellows from top law schools who will serve for two years as staff attorneys at legal services agencies and community-based organizations across the country, providing legal assistance to low-income immigrants in an array of immigration matters. Inspired by Chief Judge Robert Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and launched in 2014, IJC is the nation’s first fellowship program wholly dedicated to meeting immigrants’ needs for high-quality legal assistance.

As an IJC Fellow, Olive will work with UnLocal, Inc., a non-profit organization that provides direct immigration legal representation, legal consultations, and community education to New York City’s undocumented immigrant communities. Granados will join the New York Legal Assistance Group’s Immigrant Protection Unit, where he will gain experience in asylum applications, removal defense, Violence Against Women Act petitions, visa applications, and other complex areas of immigration law.

Olive’s passion for immigration law stems from working alongside members of immigrant communities. She first experienced the realities of deportation during college, when her coworker was unexpectedly detained and deported. At Brooklyn Law School, she has assisted survivors of domestic violence with their visa applications, advocated for asylum-seekers at the Safe Harbor Clinic, researched and drafted reports surrounding the condition of immigrant detention and access to legal services, and fought for detained immigrants in their bond and removal hearings with The Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project in Arizona.

"I chose IJC because of the spirit in which the fellowship was created, specifically the need to address the unjust nature of not providing legal representation to immigrants,” Olive said. “I wanted to be a part of and learn from the expansive network of advocates who are Fellows."

Granados’s first immigration experience was a successful asylum grant for a Tibetan Buddhist monk through the Safe Harbor Clinic. He was a summer associate at the Law Office of David Kim ’01 and served as an intern in the New York County Defender Services’ Immigration Unit. There, he learned how to prevent adverse immigration consequences for non-citizens facing criminal charges. He also interned at Appellate Advocates, where he worked on reforms helping immigrants reopen criminal cases to prevent deportation.

"I believe in IJC’s mission of increasing the amount of quality attorneys in the immigration field,” Granados said. “I want to be part of this change by collaborating with the IJC Fellow community and creating the path for the next generation of lawyers."

In praise of the 2020 fellows, Katzmann said, "This remarkably gifted incoming class of Immigrant Justice Corps Fellows will make all the difference for the thousands of immigrants they will represent and their families, providing the highest quality of legal counsel, so necessary if justice for all is to be realized.”

Meet the 2020 class of IJC Fellows.