Meet our advisors
The Advisory Committee is CILA’s connection to the needs of attorneys and agencies serving unaccompanied children. The committee is comprised of 13 attorneys and advocates from organizations working on children’s immigration cases. The committee meets quarterly to inform and advise CILA on our work and help us meet our mission to ensure more children are represented and to provide the resources and expertise needed to support those who work to represent them.
Sarah M. Hanners
Sarah Hanners is a co-supervising attorney on the Unaccompanied Children’s Program at Catholic Legal Services in Miami, Florida, where she has worked since 2017. Sarah’s program focuses on representing unaccompanied youth before the Immigration Court, State courts, and USCIS. Sarah graduated from the University of Miami School of Law in 2016 and is licensed to practice in Florida. Prior to law school, Sarah worked for many years at a wildlife refuge and rescue center in the tropical lowlands of Bolivia, an experience that solidified her desire to work in the public interest sector and serve vulnerable populations.
Beth Baltimore
Clare Murphy Shaw
She joined the McCrummen Immigration Law Group in 2017 as an associate attorney and was hired to develop a non-profit immigration law clinic, the Asylum Clinic KC (ACKC). ACKC’s mission is to expand pro bono and low bono for vulnerable immigrants, especially children, in Kansas City. Clare launched ACKC as a fully independent organization in April of 2023 and it now has a staff of 10 including 5 attorneys. She manages ACKC’s subcontract with the Acacia Institute to represent children in the United States without a parent or guardian, both who are detained in the Office of Refugee Resettlement and facing deportation and who are released from ORR custody. She also has a caseload of community-based cases. Her practice is mainly focused on humanitarian-based applications, including Asylum and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, T Visas and U Visas. She practices in front of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Immigration Court. She is fluent in Spanish.
- JD Univ. Of Mo- Columbia, 2005
- Bar Admissions: Missouri and Kansas
Amanda Slezak
Leslie Giron Kirby
Kelly Kribs
Beth Tsoulos
Beth Tsoulos is the Director of Social Work at the UCLA School of Law Immigrant Family Legal Clinic. She holds a BA degree from Occidental College and a MSW degree from the UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare. She has over thirty years of experience working on behalf of children, youth, and families in Los Angeles County. Before receiving her MSW degree, she worked as a case manager for pregnant and parenting teens. After completing her MSW, she worked with Public Counsel Law Center for over twenty years. While at Public Counsel, she supported single parents diagnosed with terminal illness as they made custody plans for their children, she also supported immigrant youth eligible for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status. She was a Supervising Social Worker at the Immigration Center for Women and Children where she built a social work program to support unaccompanied children with holistic, trauma informed services. She now supports the UCLA Law School Clinical Program, sharing holistic, client centered and trauma informed skills with law students, lawyers, and clients.
Alexa Sendukas
Alexa Sendukas is a Managing Attorney at the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project (GHIRP) in Houston, Texas and oversees the Immigrant Children & Youth (ICY) program. Alexa’s team provides direct representation and holistic legal & social services to detained and released unaccompanied minors and immigrant youth in the Houston-Galveston area. Prior to joining GHIRP, Alexa was a litigation associate attorney at a global law firm and a supervising attorney at an immigration legal services organization. She received her J.D. from Georgetown University Law School in 2014, her M.S. from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in 2014, and her B.A. from The University of Texas at Austin in 2010. At Georgetown, she was a Research Assistant for Lives in the Balance: Asylum Adjudication by the Department of Homeland Security (New York: NYU Press, Jan. 2014) and a student attorney in the Center for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) clinic representing asylum-seekers.
Marion ("Mickey") Donovan-Kaloust
Marion (“Mickey”) Donovan-Kaloust began her career working with children as a public high school teacher in Los Angeles. She transitioned to law school out of a desire to advocate for children and youth. She began her legal career as a Skadden Fellow, creating a groundbreaking program to improve legal services for system-involved immigrant youth in California’s underserved Inland Region. Following her fellowship, she opened Immigrant Defenders Law Center’s Riverside satellite office, which was one of the first full-service removal defense non-profits in the region. She has over ten years of experience working with unaccompanied immigrant youth and families at area nonprofits, including Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project, Kinds in Need of Defense, and Inland Counties Legal Services, and has served as adjunct professor of immigration law at University of La Verne Law School. She currently oversees Immigrant Defenders Law Center Children’s Representation Project. She graduated from UCLA School of Law with a specialization in public interest law and policy. She earned her B.A. from Goucher College in Maryland. She’s the mother of one child and strives to provide the quality of legal services she hopes her daughter would receive if she were ever in her client’s position.
Elissa Steglich
Elissa Steglich is Clinical Professor and Co-Director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law. In her 20 years advocating for immigrant rights, she has provided direct representation to asylum seekers, immigrant children, and immigrant survivors of violence and human trafficking. Professor Steglich regularly presents at scholarly conferences, public events, and professional trainings.
Professor Steglich previously served as Legal Services Director at the American Friends Service Committee’s Immigrant Rights Program in Newark, New Jersey. She worked with the National Immigrant Justice Center and conducted extensive field research on trafficking in Latin America and the Caribbean for the International Human Rights Law Initiative of DePaul College of Law. She serves on the advisory committee of the ABA Children’s Immigration Law Academy and on the Amicus Committee of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. She received a BA in English from Haverford College and was awarded a JD with Honors from the University of Texas School of Law.
Dolores Rosales (SW)
Jacob Wedemeyer
Jacob Wedemeyer is an attorney at Estrella del Paso (formerly DMRS) in El Paso, where he works in the Unaccompanied Minors Program representing unaccompanied children. He graduated from the University of Iowa College of Law in 2007 and then worked as an Equal Justice Works fellow for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid representing US and H-2A farmworkers in Eagle Pass.
Jaqueline Obregon
Jaqueline Obregon is a supervising attorney on the Youth Defense team at the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project (ProBAR) in Harlingen, Texas, where she has worked since 2020. The Youth Defense team provides services and represents unaccompanied minors before the Immigration Court, State Courts, and USCIS. Jaqueline received her J.D. from SMU Dedman School of Law in 2020 and is licensed to practice in Texas. Prior to law school, Jaqueline was a high school mathematics teacher.