Presenters
Kate Mahoney - Senior Staff Attorney, Immigrant Legal Resource Center
Kate joined the ILRC as a Senior Staff Attorney in 2023 after over a decade of experience fighting deportation in a variety of roles. Kate believes that the movement for immigrants’ liberation must be led by those most impacted, and she is humbled and constantly learning from the courageous clients and advocates whom she supports. Kate specializes in complex removal defense on behalf of detained and non-detained clients, including challenging removability, motions to suppress, applications for relief before USCIS and the Executive Office for Immigration Review, and federal court litigation and appeals.
Kate previously served as Legal Program Director at Dolores Street Community Services in San Francisco, where she worked closely with community partners in the Bay Area to coordinate and expand legal services for local residents facing deportation and immigration detention. In addition to direct representation, Kate also previously served as the Court-Appointed Special Monitor in Franco Gonzalez v. Holder, Case No. 10-2211 (C.D. Cal. 2010), and as a law clerk to the Honorable Dolly M. Gee in the Central District of California and at the San Francisco Immigration Court.
Kate received her law degree from U.C. Hastings College of the Law and holds a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University. She is admitted to practice in California, immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals, the Northern District of California, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She speaks Spanish and English.
Erin Quinn - Senior Managing Attorney, Immigrant Legal Resource Center
Erin Quinn is an attorney based in San Francisco. Her work focuses on building capacity of organizations and practitioners to assist immigrants. She conducts trainings on immigration law throughout the United States and provides legal expertise through the ILRC’s Attorney of the Day program. Erin has contributed to numerous ILRC publications as author or editor, including Removal Defense: Defending Immigrants in Immigration Court; Essentials of Asylum and many others. In addition, Erin works on issues related to immigration status and healthcare as well as consumer protection. She has published articles with LexisNexis Emerging Issues and American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA).
Prior to coming to the ILRC, Erin represented immigrants in all aspects of their immigration matters, with an emphasis on removal defense and complex cases. She was owner and attorney at her own firm for 5 years after defending immigrants as an associate at the Law Office of Robert B. Jobe. Her experience in immigration law and policy includes working as a fellow for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, EU headquarters in Belgium; clerking for the Immigration Court of San Francisco; and teaching courses as a lecturer at California State University, East Bay. Erin is on the Advisory Council for the Northern California Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), in which she serves as Consumer Protection Coordinator.
Erin holds a joint degree in law and public policy (JD/MPP) from the University of Michigan, where she was co-editor of Michigan Journal of Gender & Law. She received her undergraduate degree from University of California, Los Angeles, where she majored in English and Anthropology. She is a member of the California Bar and proficient in Spanish.
Merle Kahn - Senior Attorney Contractor, Immigrant Legal Resource Center
Merle Kahn has been exclusively practicing immigration law for over thirty years. For the past fifteen years she has been increasingly focusing her practice on the intersection of criminal and immigration law and on removal defense. She has vast experience in removal defense, federal appeals, the immigration consequences of crimes, family immigration, naturalization, and humanitarian immigration such as asylum, VAWA and U visas. She provides technical assistance through the ILRC’s Attorney of the Day program mentoring and assisting public defenders, criminal defense attorneys, private attorneys and nonprofit attorneys and staff with a vast array of immigration law and questions.
Since joining the ILRC as a consultant in 2023, she has contributed to several ILRC manuals including, Essentials of Asylum Law, Temporary Protected Status: Practice and Strategies, Removal Defense: Defending Immigrants in Immigration Court, and California Judges Benchbook: Domestic Violence Cases. She has authored practice advisories, presented webinars, led the ILRC 40 hour basic immigration law training, and has served as a panelist on a number of issues for the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA).
Prior to joining the ILRC she was Of Counsel at Daniel Shanfield – Immigration Defense, PC, where she represented clients before USCIS, ICE, EOIR, and the Ninth Circuit. She is the creator and writer of Top of the Ninth, a blog about important Supreme Court, Ninth Circuit, and Board of Immigration Appeals immigration cases. She founded and directed a pro bono legal clinic for refugees and asylees through Jewish Family Services of Silicon Valley (JFS) and AILA. In 2016 Merle was named an AILA Pro Bono Champion. Before entering the field of immigration law, Merle was a prosecutor for the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission for the Supreme Court of Illinois.
Merle earned her law degree from The George Washington University in Washington D.C. and received her undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she majored in English and American Literature. Merle is admitted to the California Bar.