Aruna Sury is an immigration attorney with vast experience in removal defense, immigration consequences of crimes, and federal appeals. She is based in Seattle, WA and provides consultation and litigation support to attorneys throughout the country. Through ILRC’s Attorney of the Day program, Aruna provides legal guidance to criminal defense and immigration counsel. She regularly contributes to ILRC publications by authoring and updating content that enables practitioners to provide high quality representation to their clients. Aruna also presents ILRC trainings and CLE courses on a variety of topics.
Since obtaining her law degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 2001, Aruna has dedicated her career to the areas of immigration and civil rights in various settings in San Francisco, Seattle, and Austin. She has worked in law firm and solo practice environments as well as in non-profit and public organizations, including Washington Defender Association, University of Washington, Kids in Need of Defense, and Political Asylum Project of Austin (now American Gateways). Aruna’s personal interest is in immigrants’ due process rights, particularly the right to effective counsel and expansive access to judicial review. She has secured published and unpublished Ninth Circuit decisions in these and other areas. She has also successfully litigated cases in the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Eleventh Circuits.