Understanding FOIAs with DHS

Peggy Gleason, who has dedicated her career to immigrant rights, joined ILRC in 2019 as a senior staff attorney in Washington, D.C.

She worked most recently in the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security, dealing with civil rights complaints concerning U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Earlier, she worked on family and humanitarian immigration policy and legal issues for the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman and on legal access issues for the Department of Justice Executive Office of Immigration Review.

Before her time with the federal government, she was a senior attorney for Catholic Legal Immigration Network's training and technical support section for 23 years, providing technical assistance and training to CLINIC's affiliated programs and other nonprofits nationwide. She also represented immigrant clients of Catholic Charities Immigration Legal Services for the Archdiocese of Washington. She began fulltime practice of immigration law while working for the Colorado Rural Legal Services Farmworker Program.

She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a B.A. in Ibero-American Studies and earned her J.D. at Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C. She is a member of the Colorado Bar.

Peggy is a frequent speaker on immigration law topics and contributor to publications. She speaks Spanish.

Elizabeth Taufa is a policy attorney and strategist based in Washington, D.C.  Her work is focused on U.S. Citizenship and Immigration advocacy, particularly naturalization and policies related to equal access to immigration benefits. 

Prior to joining ILRC, Elizabeth was a senior attorney with the American Bar Association's Commission on Immigration managing their detention information line. She began her legal career representing children in removal proceedings at Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Boston and previously worked as an attorney advisor in the Office of Legal Access Programs at the Executive Office for Immigration Review.  She is a native of Winchester, Virginia and holds a bachelor's degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a law degree from Northeastern University School of Law where she completed internships with the ABA's Immigration Justice Project in San Diego, Greater Boston Legal Services, and the Office of Immigration Litigation. She also volunteered with the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP).