O'Melveny Associate & UCLA Student Win 9th Circuit Immigration Appeal
Finding that a legal United States resident who served four years in the Navy had exhausted her administrative remedies, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has derailed a government effort to deport her over a California criminal conviction.
The appellate ruling (PDF) in favor for Maria Gemma Roco Ramirez was won by Grant Gelberg, an associate with O’Melveny & Myers, and Carol Igoe, a third-year law student at the University of California at Los Angeles. They represented Ramirez on a pro bono basis after Ramirez herself got the case to the 9th Circuit pro se.
“We’re thrilled; it’s a great result for the client,” Gelberg tells the ABA Journal in a telephone interview. He and Igoe briefed the case with significant help from O’Melveny partner Charles Lifland, among others. They prepared for the oral argument in moot court sessions at which O’Melveny lawyers, UCLA professors and law clinic participants fired questions at them, Gelberg says.
Ramirez, a 44-year-old mother of three who is married to a U.S. citizen, has been held in immigration detention for the past two years. However, the 9th Circuit not only ruled yesterday that her conviction didn’t constitute a deportable offense under federal law but rejected the government’s effort to return the case for further administrative hearings, according to Gelberg and a law firm press release.
O’Melveny and UCLA’s law school began a joint program last year in which the two collaborate to perform pro bono work on federal appellate cases. Several other appellate cases handled by other O’Melveny associates and UCLA students are awaiting rulings, and more are in the pipeline.
Ramirez was still in detention as of yesterday, but an Arizona immigrant rights organization will now help her win release, Gelberg says.
Her appellate case turned on a disparity between the California statute under which she was convicted and the federal definition of what the government claimed was a comparable crime that qualified Ramirez for deportation, he explains. What exactly she was convicted of isn’t clear from the record, but the state statute, which references “forgery,” in fact does not extend to the conduct that most people—and federal law—contemplate in connection with that crime, he says.
Although Gelberg was a little nervous before the oral argument, he was primarily excited about the opportunity to appear in the 9th Circuit, “I really believed in our case, and we had prepared a lot,” he says of himself and Igoe. The two “didn’t get a question that we weren’t expecting,” he says, crediting the people who helped the two prepare for the oral argument. “They put a lot of thought and energy into giving us a good test.”
Igoe, who plans to clerk with a 9th Circuit judge after she gets her UCLA law degree, says she also was nervous, but felt ready and thought the oral argument went well.
“The clinic was the highlight of my law school career, both because of the great victory for our client and the fantastic opportunity to develop my appellate advocacy skills,” she tells the ABA Journal in an e-mail, crediting Gelberg for giving her a lot of help. “Likewise, the brief-writing process was also a great skill-builder for me.”
Updated at 5:15 p.m. to include comments from Igoe.
