Who meets the threshold requirement of having been “inspected and admitted or paroled” for adjustment of status under INA 245(a)? Are there other avenues to adjust status if someone last entered without inspection? This webinar will focus on the adjustment of status process for individuals pursuing permanent resident status through a family petition here in the United States, including various pathways to adjustment and red flags. We will compare 245(i) eligibility and traditional adjustment under 245(a), as well as strategies for establishing adjustment eligibility.
Presenters
Ariel Brown - Senior Staff Attorney, Immigrant Legal Resource Center
Ariel Brown joined the ILRC in April 2017. After five years in private practice at a well-respected immigration firm in Sacramento, Schoenleber & Waltermire, PC, Ariel brings extensive practical experience to the ILRC. She has experience filing numerous immigration applications and regularly appearing before USCIS, ICE, and EOIR, with cases spanning the areas of removal defense, family-based adjustment of status and consular processing, DACA, naturalization, SIJS, U visas, and VAWA. She was also involved in establishing Sacramento’s rapid response network to respond to immigration enforcement action, and served as an American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA)-USCIS liaison.
Ariel contributes to the ILRC’s Attorney of the Day legal technical assistance program, as well as writing and updating practice advisories and manuals and presenting on family-based topics for ILRC webinars.
Prior to joining the ILRC, Ariel also briefly volunteered with the International Institute of the Bay Area in Oakland, and Catholic Charities of the East Bay in Richmond. In law school, Ariel was a student advocate with the UC Davis Immigration Law Clinic, assisting with cancellation of removal cases for indigent noncitizens, and an editor for the Journal of International Law and Policy.
Ariel earned her law degree from the University of California at Davis, and her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she majored in anthropology. Ariel is admitted to the state bar in California.
Ann Block - Senior Staff Attorney, Immigrant Legal Resource Center
Ann Block is a 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 small, 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 the immigration consequences of criminal convictions.
Ann 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 also contributed to most ILRC manuals, has authored or edited numerous articles and practice advisories, presented webinars, led the ILRC 40-hour basic immigration law training, as well as serving as both a trainer and a panelist on a number of immigration issues for the ILRC, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), the California State Bar, 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.
Carolina Castaneda - Staff Attorney & Lead Fellowship Trainer, Immigrant Legal Resource Center
Carolina Castaneda joined the ILRC in February of 2023. After ten years in private practice, seven of those running her own immigration firm in Merced, California, Carolina brings extensive practical experience to the ILRC. She has represented detained and non-detained individuals in removal proceedings before the Executive Office for Immigration Review. She also has ample experience filing and representing clients before USCIS with cases spanning from the areas of DACA, advance parole, naturalization, SIJS, U visas, family-based adjustment of status, and consular processing. Carolina has also represented clients before the Board of Immigration Appeals and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Prior to joining the ILRC, Carolina worked at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), where she represented clients in removal proceedings and provided trainings to attorneys and staff. As an immigrant and Central Vally resident, Carolina strives to use her legal education and experience to positively impact, strengthen, and extend legal capacity in underserved immigrant communities.
Carolina received her J.D. from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, and her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Irvine, where she majored in Criminology, Law, and Society. Carolina is admitted to the State Bar of California and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She is fluent in Spanish.
