SIJS-based Adjustment of Status before EOIR

Rachel is one of ILRC's staff attorneys based in San Francisco. Rachel focuses on immigrant youth issues, including unaccompanied minors and immigrant youth in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems. Rachel provides technical assistance and trainings to immigration and state court attorneys, social workers, and judges. She works on statewide and national policy that affects the rights of immigrant youth and is frequently consulted for her expertise in Special Immigrant Juvenile Status. Rachel co-authored the ILRC's publication Special Immigrant Juvenile Status and Other Immigration Options for Children and Youth.

Prior to joining the ILRC, Rachel represented detained and released unaccompanied minors in removal defense and led a project focusing on Special Immigrant Juvenile Status at Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project in Los Angeles. While at Esperanza, Rachel also performed "Know Your Rights" work in southern California immigration detention centers for minors. Previously, Rachel worked as an associate at Paul Hastings, LLP and volunteered as a Child Advocate for unaccompanied minors.

Rachel earned her law degree from the University of California at Davis, where she was a member of the Immigration Law Clinic and worked on complex deportation defense cases and detention issues. She received her undergraduate degree from Westmont College, where she double-majored in philosophy and political science. Rachel is admitted to the bar in California. She is conversant in Spanish.

Ann Block is a part-time Senior Staff Attorney with the ILRC based in Davis and San Francisco. She has been with the ILRC part-time since 2009 on a contract basis, and in 2019 transitioned to a staff position.  She also maintains a part-time private practice in Davis, California. Ann has expertise in family immigration, naturalization and citizenship, VAWA and U visas, asylum, removal defense, as well as extensive experience with immigration consequences of criminal convictions. She provides technical assistance through the ILRC's Attorney of the Day program, mentoring and assisting nonprofit attorneys and staff, public defenders and private attorneys with a wide variety of immigration law questions and cases.

She has contributed to several ILRC manuals, including Defending Immigrants in the Ninth Circuit; Naturalization & U.S. Citizenship; Inadmissibility and Deportability; The VAWA Manual; The “U” Visa; Hardship in Immigration Law; Families and Immigration; Inadmissibility and Deportability; FOIA Requests and Other Background Checks; Removal Defense: Defending Immigrants in Immigration Court; and A Guide for Immigration Advocates/  Ann has authored articles, presented webinars, led the ILRC 40 hour basic immigration law training, and has served as a panelist on a number of immigration issues for the ILRC, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild (NIPNLG).

Prior to the ILRC, Ann gained extensive private and nonprofit experience as a staff attorney with Park & Associates, Catholic Charities in San Mateo, the International Institute of San Francisco, and her own solo private practice. Ann has additional teaching experience as a former adjunct professor at McGeorge School of Law, supervising the Immigration Clinic and teaching the podium course on Immigration Law.  She has also served on the California State Bar's Immigration and Nationality Law Commission (INLAC), the entity that certifies attorneys as immigration law specialists, including as both vice-chair and chair of INLAC.

Ann earned her law degree from the University of California at Davis where she represented clients through the prison law and immigration law clinics. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she double-majored in psychology and political science. Ann is admitted to the bar in California and is conversant in Spanish, with working knowledge of written French.